You know you're in trouble when you have to buy three movie tickets to get to anything dubbed "the defining chapter"No, no. Not The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Just Five Armies. Those Middle Earth movies have long since passed their expiration date for TFE's interest, though, if you're curious for a review Timothy wrote an excellent one (as is his enviable habit). Peter Jackson, once an exciting, rowdy, and passionate human filmmaker is now a factory mogul. Contrary to popular belief, we love television here at The Film Experience but each medium has its place. Serialized storytelling is TV's most beloved strength. The movies aren't very good at it. And that's what annual franchises are, one season of an expensive show per year that's only two or three episodes long in which something may or may not happen depending on how much material the show-runner and writers room have come up with and how much money the production company is hoping to wring out of you for the next few seasons.
Since this is technically the final Middle Earth movie (naturally, Peter Jackson is already threatening to continue. Won't any of his close friends stage an intervention?) let's celebrate with five armies -- extremely randomly chosen -- that are exceedingly nice to look at for a special military edition of Beauty Break.
We'll start with one of Jackson's own to be as nice as we can muster at this point...
Aragorn and the Army of the Dead
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
OH VIGGO MY VIGGO. Few romantic heroes have ever read so romantic and heroic simultaneously as Aragorn, the only regular non-superpowered human in the fellowship. And of all the charges he led into battle, none ever provided such deliciously flattering backlighting as that ghost army he gathered for the final film.
FOUR MORE ARMIES AFTER THE JUMP...
Foreign Legion in "Beau Travail"
Beau Travail
Nobody ever made mandatory military service more poetic and homoerotic than Claire Denis, now, did they? If you'd like to argue it we'd be more than willing to investigate any celluloid evidence presented. As cherry on the top of her highbrow beefcake, that awesomely awkward dance break release...
This is the rhythm of the night
The night, oh yeah
The rhythm of the nightThis is the rhythm of my life
My life, oh yeah
The rhythm of my life
The Flying Daggers... The Tang Dynasty wants this rebel do-good militia dead.
The House of Flying Daggers
Not unlike Viggo above, these warriors have awesome colorologists. The Flying Daggers are a do-good militia, Robin-Hood like actually though they aren't as merry since the Tang Dynasty wants them dead and sends in combat skilled police captains like Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro). But how can Takeshi be expected to destroy Zhang Ziyi (whose with the Daggers) when she's the only human being in the universe as gobsmackingly beautiful as he?
Unbroken
I wasn't aware that the military assigned groups by physical beauty but Angelina Jolie was! Hence: Jai Courtney, Finn Wittrock, Jack O'Connell, and Domnhall Gleeson all sharing the same plane in the first(ish) act as they attempt a rescue mission that quickly goes awry (poor things). Later in the prison camps where the rest of the film is set, Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is able to befriend the lookiest lookers at the camp zeroing in on them even under the grime; enter Garrett Hedlund!
Montgomery Clift in Anything
A One Man Army of Beauty in so many military movies: The Search (1949), The Big Lift (1950), From Here To Eternity (1953) and more...
Thoughts? Which of these armies would you love to be attacked by? Which imposing attack squad would you have included that I forgot?