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Nightmare Fuel / The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

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"You have no power here, servant of Morgoth!"
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  • Thorin's increasingly unhinged behaviour as he becomes consumed by dragon sickness. At one point, when he's ranting and raving in front of Bilbo, his voice starts shifting until only Smaug's echoing snarl is audible. Not to mention the Meaningful Echo of Smaug's refusal to part with a single coin of the hoard.
    • Almost every scene of Thorin is underscored by the creeping strings that were used for Smaug in the previous film. He may be dead, but the Fire-Drake lives on in Thorin and affects a huge amount of the story until Thorin eventually discards his crown.
    • His Heel Realization of how he's been consumed by his greed is accompanied by lovely hallucinations of Smaug's form slithering underneath the molten gold, before the sheer mass proceeds to swallow him whole. The latter in particular is heavily reminiscent of a black hole and its event horizon...
    • Those familiar with Norse mythology (which was a key inspiration in Tolkien's writings) were probably reminded of Fafnir and the Rhinegold at this point. If Thorin hadn't shaken off the corruption, his fate may have been far worse than mere gold sickness. He was becoming more and more a new Smaug in everything but form.
  • Smaug incinerating hundreds if not thousands of people during his attack on Laketown with nothing initially seeming able to stop him.
    • The effects of the rampage. The movie does not descend into A Million Is a Statistic; people are heard screaming and struggling to get away, some of the unlucky ones around aren't able to escape fast enough, and we see one person's boat catch on fire. Smaug's first blast alone is sufficient to split the entire town in two, and Lake-Town is almost completely destroyed with just a few more.
    • "Is that your child? You cannot save him from the fire! He. Will. BURN!"
    • The teaser trailer provides a frightening yet spectacular example of Smaug's destructive fire.
    • The aftermath of Smaug's rampage isn't any better. Laketown was the Dung Ages, but the film hammers on how much worse it is to have no home at all.
  • The look that Tauriel and the Dwarves on The Mountain have on their faces as they watch Smaug's rampage. They all know that they are utterly powerless to stop the monster, and it's killing them to watch it.
  • Azog's forces slaughtering the unprepared and poorly equipped men, women, and children of Lake-Town, with their corpses littering the ruins of Dale.
  • The scene where Sauron whispers the poem of the One and the Nazgûl came one after another, surrounding Galadriel. And these aren't the hooded Dark Riders from the previous movies, oh no. They're all transparent and clad in Dark Souls-esque armour. To emphasize this is the look on Galadriel's face as she is initially surrounded; either that's outright fear or her "merely" being shaken, but regardless, her losing her composure at all shows just how dangerous and terrifying the situation is, and comes close to being a Break the Badass moment.
    • Even more terrifying? How Sauron seems to summon the Nine from his armoured hands. It shows how they're no longer the proud kings they once were, instead teleport-spamming ghostly servants of Sauron that would pretty much fell the entire Company if not all the warriors in Gondor, within seconds.
    • Everything, from their appearance to their movement, just feels wrong. Specific moments include: when they fight Saruman and Elrond, they move so fast that it's a miracle those two could keep up; one is thrown off the high tower during the fight, then there's a rush of movement and suddenly it's climbing the rockface, completely against gravity and moving on all fours like it's feral; later, one is stabbed and falls spasming, repeatedly blinking in-and-out of sight like an incomplete manifestation, i.e. something that shouldn't exist in Middle-Earth.
  • Galadriel's "Dark Queen" form when she fights Sauron, which looks a lot like Samara/Sadako. It doesn't help that she just jumps up from the ground into centre frame within seconds.
  • The way Smaug dies. The Black Arrow seems to rupture his fire system and burn him from the inside out.
    • Bard's final attempt to kill Smaug. He knows he's only got one shot left. Even if this works, he and Bain could likely die anyway, and all he can do is keep his son from looking at their approaching doom. Smaug even taunts him about it, which makes it all the worse.
  • Azog's wereworms.
  • As if surviving a mad dragon's rampage isn't enough, a whole army of orcs, bats, goblins, and trolls follow in pursuit. The people of Lake-Town are in a hell of a lot of trouble after trouble.
  • The deaths of both Fíli and Kíli. Fíli is surrounded by Orcs while drums and lights come down the passages, and then Azog impales him from behind after revealing him to Thorin. Kíli is stabbed by Bolg right in front of Tauriel. To see the two most human and sympathetic of the Dwarf party brutally killed off is both horrifying and saddening.
    • And then consider the boys' ages. They're confirmed to be the youngest members of the Company and it's never made clear if Fíli and Kíli are even of age in Dwarven society. Thorin, Dwalin, and Bilbo are forced to watch a young boy, whom they all love and care deeply for, be stabbed through the chest with no one to comfort or hold him. And then Kíli also dies an equally terrible death without any of them being there for him either.
    • A significant chunk of the film focuses on parental worries and doesn't spare a single race from it. Bard is in a constant state of fear and panic for his three children, Thranduil can be seen visibly losing his calm at the prospect of Legolas being on the battlefield, and Thorin, Bilbo, and Dwalin are faced with the horror of watching Fíli's impalement and not seeing or even learning (in Thorin's case) of Kíli's death. The dead bodies of several children are shown in Dale as well.
  • Seeing Azog's body floating beneath the ice under Thorin's feet is just creepy. He then proceeds to stab Thorin through the foot with his massive sword as Thorin howls in pain!
  • Bolg's brutal beatdown of Tauriel during the Battle of the Five Armies is difficult to watch. Every one of his punches is like a sledgehammer, and would probably crush the skull of any Mortal Man like an egg. At one point, he punches her out of frame so hard that you're sure she must be dead. To see this lovely Elven maiden being tossed around like that is very unsettling.
  • The Troll that Legolas causes to crash into the tower to make a bridge to fight Bolg is one of the most horrifying things that could be seen in the movie. Pale white, all four of its limbs cut off with weapons fixed onto the stumps, along with its eyes put out with chains attached in their place. The fact that Legolas kills the thing seems almost like a Mercy Kill.
    • In the extended edition, we see an orc (and later, Bofur) ride the troll, steering it by jerking on the chains attached to the eyes. Heaven knows what pain that thing must be going through every time that chain is yanked.
  • Legolas stabbing Bolg in the hand in the extended edition, only for Bolg to look at the knife embedded in his hand and then smile sadistically before swiping it at Legolas's face. Oh, yeah, and you see the blood drip from Bolg's hand.
    • Even worse is that, in the commentary, is that Peter Jackson said that the majority of the extended edition had to be cut due to time, but this one had to be cut due to censors. Let us repeat, this film, which would have been bloody already, saw this one little scene as too extreme.
    • It's even more horrible if you look at the MPAA's track record, given that so many people criticize it for violence. Since the hyperrealistic blood of the Orcs and Trolls is only for a second, and it's merely Black Blood, apparently the MPAA didn't seem to mind that. This one little sequence, on the other hand, was enough for them to say to Peter "This is too much".
  • In the extended edition, Thorin rides to Ravenhill while being covered by Balin, Dwalin, Fíli, and Kíli. The latter group rides in a war chariot armed with spiked wheels that not only slice through several Orcs' legs but decapitate six Trolls in a row and disembowel a Warg. Complete with hyperrealistic blood, no less.
  • Azog's ogres. They're halfway between the orcs and trolls in size, and are surprisingly agile and strong. One comes close to killing Bard's children during the orcs' attack on Dale. In the extended edition, we're treated to the sight of them destroying three dwarf war chariots and easily slaughtering the crews, all in under a minute.


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