Monday, July 28, 2014

The Battle of the Five Armies and the Trailer Full of Battles

O you devoted ones, I know you've seen this already, but here has come the official teaser trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Wow, that really is a long title, but I guess we're stuck with it now, eh?



You know what I think is most remarkable about this trailer? It's the way that they managed to have two minutes of exciting footage without showing us anything at all. (Yes, I know all the frame-by-framers are busy dissecting everything, but I'm not interested in dissecting: I'll wait for the movie.) Battle sequences without much context, characters that we've seen before, and simple lines. The (wonderful) addition of "Home is Behind" even gives it a slight fan trailer feel. Slightly. 

I mean no disrespect by saying that for, after all, The Hobbit films have always been about giving the fans what they want. An emotional trailer that brings back emotions from the past while getting you to anticipate new feels? Sure thing, here it is. And that song does a wonderful job of growing from where The Desolation of Smaug left off. I've mentioned how I loved the way that movie ended, with Bilbo's realization of chaos, basically, and then that realization fading into "I See Fire." So the trailer takes off from "I See Fire" and Bilbo's face at the end of the movie, giving us his face again and "Home is Behind." That song speaks so well to the nature of The Hobbit the book, where the middle is a definite change of tone from children's adventure story to a darker, action epic. There should be some exciting ground to cover in The Battle of the Five Armies--let's just hope it isn't all swordplay.

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