Finally watched the Battle of Five Armies: Extended Edition. My Thoughts.

Long post ahead, but I do hope that you read it all. Many of you know I'm not the biggest fan of the Hobbit trilogy in its current form, but I wanted to sit down and give Peter Jackson one last chance to redeem himself with the Battle of Five Armies Extended Edition. I've heard mixed opinions on the EE...some are happy to have what they feel should have been the TE, and others are still upset that more scenes weren't included. I tried going into this with an open mind, and did my best not to watch the film and think about which new scenes I would/wouldn't include in my Hobbit fan edit later this month. So! With all that being said, here's how I feel about the BOFA EE.

It sucks.

Maybe some of you are happy with it, but for the life of me I cannot fathom how anyone thinks this is a good film. The theatrical version was already violently incoherent, and almost fully devoid of Tolkien's spirit. This extended version is even MORE violent and only slightly less incoherent. There were such high hopes that PJ & Co would fix all the plot holes and unresolved arcs with the EE, and those hopes have been dashed in favor of tasteless blood and gore.

I've followed SO many speculative posts over this past year on TORN, with everyone weighing in on the awesome new footage we'd hope to see in the EE. (...) The funeral was largely disappointing for me, and there was no coronation...Dain nods his head and that's it. Better than nothing, I guess. Beorn got maybe 5-6 SECONDS of new footage, and is now officially the most shafted Tolkien character in this trilogy. But hey, we did get that nice scene with Bofur and Bilbo, right? Doesn't that excuse all the other shortcomings?

No, it does not. Which leads me to the other 90% of new footage. Violence, blood, guts, dismemberment, decapitations and so on. Oh, and more Alfrid. None of which actually moves the story forward. The last thing that BOFA needed was more violence for the sake of it. The man who brought us the LOTR films is not the same man who gave us these Hobbit films.
(...)
Don't hold out hope for a non-existent Super Extended Mega Mithril Edition. Will that honestly make this film THAT much better? The version of the Hobbit you are hoping to see does not exist. A few extra minutes of footage will not save it now.

(...)
This was the last time I'll ever watch PJ's Hobbit films in their original form. From here on out I'm watching J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

Andererseits hätte es mich immens überrascht, wenn der EE irgendeinen verschmähten Zuschauer, dem die Hobbitfilme sowieso alle nicht gefallen, noch mal für sich gewonnen hätte. Der Grundfilm bleibt ja derselbe.

Ich kenne die Kinoversion - zwei mal geguckt - und finde sie schrecklich. Nicht ingesamt, aber in maßgeblichen Bestandteilen. Unterschreiben tue ich den fett markierten Satzteil "The man who brought us the LOTR films is not the same man who gave us these Hobbit films."