The extended edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is rated R for violence. That’s right: the third movie adaptation of the classic children’s book is rated R. Meaning that if anyone under the age of 17 wished to see this adaptation of a children’s adventure novel, they’d need to be accompanied by an adult. This fact has gnawed at my mind, like some deep nameless thing, since I learned about it. Granted, I have not seen the extended edition of this movie, nor the extended versions of any of the other Hobbit movies. The extended editions of The Lord of the Rings movies are essential and make the movies all the richer, but I don’t have any desire to spend more time with the Hobbit trilogy than is strictly necessary. And I certainly see no reason to see an R-rated version of The Hobbit.
It’s not, of course, that children’s stories can’t be told for an adult audience. Many fairy tales are deeply brutal and bloody in their earliest tellings. Artists like Alan Moore have taken the subtexts of children’s classics like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and reimagined them in very adult ways. But The Hobbit is not an old fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, nor are Jackson’s movies reinterpreting J.R.R. Tolkien’s book in new, experimental ways: they are fairly straightforward adaptations. That one of the movies ended up meriting an R rating means that something went oh so very awry. We are a long way from the cinematic masterpieces of the Rings trilogy.
We’ve already covered what went wrong, and what also went right, in An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. And if those movies felt a little stretched, like butter over too much bread, Battle is positively Gollum-like in its desiccation. The first two movies have much to recommend them, as much as they go astray at times, but I’ve started and scratched this review a dozen times because it’s so difficult to dig into this third one. For as long and busy with plot and action as the film is, not much actually happens.
The film opens with its one good scene, the attack of the dragon Smaug on Lake-town. Smaug is, as mentioned previously, gloriously realized, and his devastation of Lake-town is beautifully done, as is the tension as Bard fumbles for a black arrow with which to kill the beast. Sadly, when Smaug dies, so does any reason to continue watching the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLVwWxd_MUo
After Lake-town is destroyed, the survivors on the shore rally around Bard as their new leader, opportunistically helped by Alfrid Lickspittle (yes, he’s really named that), the least essential character in Middle-earth. We also get a few shots of Lake-towners of Color who, despite the trilogy’s nine hours of film, never speak a word. The Master of Lake-town was apparently hoarding their lines along with the town’s resources. Bard leads the remnants to the ruins of Dale and demands the Dwarves offer restitution, seeing as they stirred up the dragon, despite his warnings. (He might offer up a scathing prayer to Manwë while he’s at it, since the Quest of Erebor seems to have been his idea.)
Thorin refuses as he’s become increasingly “gold-sick” and paranoid. The fabled Arkenstone is missing (Bilbo pocketed it after sensing Thorin had become unglued) and Oakenshield suspects he’s been betrayed from within. This proves fortuitous for the world, as his vicious delusions lead him to give Bilbo a mithril shirt, thinking Bilbo is his last ally and needs protectors from the conspirators. It’s an act of unhinged paranoia that will save the world a few times over some six decades later after Bilbo gifts the shirt to Frodo. Thanks, Thorin!
Thranduil shows up on his moose and demands his own share of the treasure. Men and Elves form an alliance against the Dwarves, who are holding out for help from Thorin’s cousin Dain. Legolas and Tauriel teleport to Mount Gundabad, see some bats, and then teleport back.
Suffering most of all is Gandalf, who is stuck in a cage in Dol Guldur, Sauron’s fortress in Mirkwood. But then Elrond, Saruman, and Galadriel show up and fight the Ringwraiths in a battle that truly does look like something out of a video game, specifically one that charges quarters. The film reaches its creative nadir in this scene, when Sauron appears and Galadriel Goes Green.
Let’s pause here for a moment. Galadriel’s Big Green Glow-Up in Fellowship of the Ring has a very specific context. She’s not demonstrating a special move she has. She’s not going Super Saiyan. She’s casting a vision of what she would become if she took the One Ring and became a Dark Queen, “stronger than the foundations of the earth!” Galadriel, it should be noted, does not have the One Ring in this scene in Battle of the Five Armies. She doesn’t even know it’s been found. Her Hulk Out is entirely fan service, entirely referential. It makes zero sense in the narrative world of the movie. “All shall love me and despair!” became a popular image and meme after Fellowship came out, so here it is again. Don’t you remember it? Don’t you love it? Enjoy!
Galadriel’s Mint-Sadako impression somehow works, Sauron skedaddles, and Gandalf remembers he left some Dwarves and a hobbit in charge of killing a dragon, and rushes off to Erebor. He arrives just in time for Bilbo to abscond with the Arkenstone and hand it over to Thranduil and Bard. Thranduil is, at least, delightfully haughty as always, and his, “You started this, Mithrandir. You will forgive me if I finish it,” is the film’s best line. Lee Pace brings so much danger to his line readings and here, especially, you can get a sense of his long and uneasy relationship with Gandalf. The Elvenking seems positively delighted to be able to stick it to this Maia from the Uttermost West, but is also wise enough not to gloat too much. It’s a glimmering jewel of a line, shining all the brighter for the narrative haze around it (I imagine the Amazon Lord of the Rings show will chart its own course through Middle-earth, but it would be wonderful to see Pace return as Thranduil—who’s been alive since the First Age—since for my money, he ties with Cate Blanchett for the award of “Best Performance as an Eldar in a Feature Film”).
Dain and his dwarvish soldiers from the Iron Hills arrive and prepare to make war on the Elves and Men besieging his cousin Thorin. Billy Connolly sadly gets little screen time as Dain, but he’s wonderfully memorable, especially atop his war-pig. Frankly, it hurts to give a negative review to any movie that features Billy Connolly swinging a war hammer and threatening people while riding a pig, but here we are.
Before the Battle of the Three Armies can begin, two more show up: those led by Azog and Bolg. Azog arrives via tunnels burrowed by “wild were-worms,” creatures that, in the book, Bilbo briefly mentions during the “unexpected party.” The appearance of the wild were-worms is fine for what it is. As the popularity of the new Dune movie proves, people cannot get enough giant cinematic worm action. They’re well-designed, fit with the plot of the book (where the goblin armies arrive at Erebor via secret tunnels), and use an element mentioned from the book, one that many a Tolkien fan (including me) has long tried to imagine.
But to me at least, they also epitomize the flaws of the Hobbit movie trilogy. In the book, Bilbo mentions the worms off-handedly in a Tookish fit, insisting that if the Dwarves need him to, he’s perfectly capable of going all the way to “the East of East to fight the wild were-worms in the Last Desert.” Unlike other briefly mentioned locales in the book, like the Mines of Moria or the ruined city of Gondolin, Tolkien never writes further about the Last Desert. It’s never mapped or described in more detail. It’s a fairy-tale place, in other words, both to the reader and to the characters. Its ambiguity and the image of “wild were-worms” aren’t meant to suggest the actual topography of Tolkien’s world, but Bilbo’s inexperienced views of it. Do the wild were-worms exist? Maybe, but the point is Bilbo doesn’t know, and neither do we. He’s just spinning off dangerous sounding places to say he’s hobbit enough for the burglary job.
Tolkien understood that some things must be left to the reader’s imagination: “Even in a mythical age, there must be some enigmas, as there always are.” An author, even one as meticulous in their worldbuilding as Tolkien, cannot fully map out an entire otherworld, especially one set in a distant past. The wild were-worms are Tolkien’s narrative version of “hic sunt dracones,” and an important one, since the book includes an actual map locating the precise location of a dragon. When you know exactly where dragons live in a story, you need something else out there nibbling away at the margins.
Jackson’s inclusion of the wild were-worms is symptomatic of speculative fiction filmmaking in the Golden Age of the Geek, an age that Jackson’s Rings movies helped usher in. No stone can be left unturned, no intriguing little bit of worldbuilding can be left unfilmed or unfranchised. Nothing is left to the imagination. It’s like riding Space Mountain with the lights on.
That might be forgivable if it led to anything interesting, but everything in Battle feels rote and tired. The battle in Battle drags on and on, a war fought not to extend territory but the film’s run time, and while we get some cool troll designs courtesy of Weta (I particularly like the ones being piloted, cruelly, by hook-wielding Orcs), none of it has any impact. Kili dies, Tauriel grieves, Thranduil has a change of heart, and Legolas decides to go wandering with the Rangers. Thorin also dies in a “Battle of the Ice” against Azog that is, like everything in these movies, both beautifully rendered and stretched out to the point of drudgery.
As in the book, the Eagles arrive, along with the briefest glimpses of Radagast and Beorn, to remind us that, oh yes, they were also in these films. Thorin and Bilbo make amends before the former dies, and then Bilbo returns home to find his possessions being auctioned. When he uses his contract as proof of his identity, the auctioneer asks who Thorin Oakenshield is, and Bilbo says, “He was my friend.” Sixty years later, Gandalf knocks at the door, and The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy begins, in case you forgot there were nine other (far better) hours of hobbit action on film out there to watch.
As I’ve written these Movies of Middle-earth reviews, I’ve tried to imagine what the movies would look and feel like to a viewer (I call her Elanor) who first watched the 1977 Hobbit movie on TV and saw the pop culture landscape change around her in the following decades. The ending, as it stands now, is as bittersweet as one of Tolkien’s: The nerds have triumphed and reign supreme, but with that comes certain disappointments. For a Tolkien lover like Elanor, it’d be thrilling that Middle-earth finally gained such pop cultural power that Hollywood studios invested hundreds of millions of dollars in making nine hours of The Hobbit adaptation to release in theaters, and that Amazon reportedly paid $250 million for the rights to the Second Age show that debuts next year. But Hollywood is reshaping Middle-earth as much as Middle-earth has reshaped Hollywood, and there’s no better proof of that than the overcooked, overexposed, overlong, overly violent The Battle of the Five Armies. Like Bilbo, we set off on an exciting adventure, and now we’ve come to a weary reckoning. The magic that animated version of The Hobbit promised in a wood-paneled basement forty years ago is gone. There’s no going home again. The furniture’s been auctioned off, and the spoons are missing.
Still, I can’t completely dismiss the Hobbit trilogy. When my wife, son, and I watched them over a succession of nights, on the couch in our wood-paneled basement no less, they managed to entertain us well enough. While The Lord of the Rings movies have a dragon’s hoard worth of cinematic treasures to them, the pleasures in The Hobbit movies are harder to come by, but they’re there if you look closely, like little golden rings glimmering in the dark.
Austin Gilkeson has written for Tin House, McSweeney’s, Vulture, Foreign Policy, The Toast, and other publications. He lives just outside Chicago with his wife and son.
The weird thing about this movie for me is that I didn’t find it a slog. Yes, objectively I agree that there are a lot of needlessly long sequences of CG action and noise, but there’s so little actual story in the movie that it somehow felt short to me.
This is so well written – the R rating exactly encapsulates my own issue with it, and this is the only movie where I feel the extended edition is actually worse.
I actually like the concept of getting to see the White Council at Dol Guldur but I totally see your point of bringing in ‘Green Galadriel’ being too on the nose.
I still always think of your ‘metal deaths’ article when I think about this movie and about how a sexy dwarf got a better death scene than Elendil and Gil-Galad lol. But yes everything about that was dumb too especially because they were supposed to die in a heroic last stand for Thorin.
I liked the were worms a bit, but I totally get your point here too about the over-reliance on excessive Easter eggs.
For my money, this movie was “so bad, it’s good”. Shai Hulud shows up, Legolas does a Super Mario impression; you just can’t take any of it seriously.
I wish we had a movie that was worthy of the source material though.
This movie was predictably terrible. All of us who sat through the first two, knew that this one was going to be dreadful. But even so, it was still much worse. This essay lays out the film’s many, many flaws. But I would like to expand what irked me the most.
The battle in The Hobbit is briefly described over a few pages as I recall, with very few specific details called out. Thorin wields a battle axe (perhaps the reason why dwarves are associated more with axes than hammers to this day), there are big bad goblin elite warriors, arrows and eagles. But the real MVP of the battle was Beorn. He shows up late in the battle in the shape of an enormous bear, takes down the near-indestructible elite goblins and carries Thorin out of the battle to die peacefully. I’m pretty sure its the most detailed part of the battle described, and 10 year old me thought it was probably the coolest passage in the book. 40-something-me was looking forward to at least that, even if the film was doomed to be bad. But we never saw it. Beorn drops off an eagle , turns into a bear and roars a bit. I’m not sure he gets 30 seconds. Adding in the short shrift Beorn gets in the second movie, and one wonders what Peter Jackson had against the character, Is he afraid of bears or something? It’s Rian-Johnson-killing-Ackbar-off-screen-bad. No excuse!*
For as insanely long this trilogy is, the best parts of the actual book seem woefully cut short. Seeing as there was so much space to fill by turning a short book into three epic movies, the fact that many of the actual scenes of the book shown were cut short is somewhat inexplicable. The spider fight in the second movie feels far shorter than what was in the book. among other “shortened” scenes. I don’t get it.
Oh and Beorn has black hair, what the hell Jackson?
*Yes, I need to let these thing go. I know.
@@.-@ – No, you don’t. Never let go, until they FIX THE PROBLEM.
Wild were-worms. Contextually in Tolkien and especially in the Hobbit, as reflecting much folklore of older date, “worm” = “dragon”. Bilbo off-handedly saying he doesn’t want to go off and fight wild were-worms in the great unknown is him saying he doesn’t want to go fight a dragon for the dwarves nor burgle one, thank you very much. Taking that line and using it to give orcs great burrowing worms to ride on in the style of Tremors or Dune is a drastic misunderstanding of language and encapsulates everything wrong with Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. It’s especially ironic because Tolkien was all about language and etymology, and he mostly wrote stories to give context to his languages.
Correction to my last comment – I got the overall sense of Bilbo’s statement about backwards, but I stand by my interpretation of “wild were-worms” meaning nothing more nor less than DRAGONS like Smaug and the rest of his kind.
Couldn’t agree more. I saw the first movie in theaters and didn’t bother with other two. Still haven’t seen them to this day.
@7 & 8 …And since “were” meant man in Old English, Bilbo was really implying he wasn’t willing to fight a hoard of wild dragon-men, or Trogdors. Very sensible of him, really.
I could be your Elanor. I was six when the animated Hobbit came out. I remember watching it with my family, enthralled as the story unspooled with magic and song over two nights. That year, I got an LP set with the story and songs that I played over and over. (The music is still embedded in my soul, and snatches of song often appear in my head without warning.) Happily, Jackson’s Hobbit movies are so far removed from those happy memories as to not impact them at all.
It is interesting to see the growth and acceptance of geek culture over the last 45 years, but I suspect that has more to do with a galaxy far, far away than it does with a hole in the ground. Still 1977 was a great time to be a baby geek.
Again, I cannot shout too loudly about the reworked fan-cuts of this trilogy you can find online. I’ve watched the Maple Cut myself and am never going back. Talented people, some of them actually in the movie-business, trimming the bits that drag, maybe removing the appendixes stuff, or removing the scenes with Legolas that unfortunately led nowhere, and restructuring what’s left until they have a shorter, more focused experience that showcases what these movies did right.
There are several popular cuts, and you can easily read up on what changes they’ve made, to see what suits you best. I, for instance, love the Maple cut for focusing more tightly on the dwarfs, who I consider to be the best part of these movies.
@9 omg I died
What stuck with me from the final battle having read the book as a kid was not the cool action scenes or heroics of the characters, but rather the sense of bleakness and senseless waste in its aftermath. Not glory and sarcastic quips, but carrion crows and painful death.
I find with a lot of modern action/scifi/fantasy movies I get bored in the last half. The first half, which sets up the characters and involves plot and dialogue and world building is fun, but when it switches to the extended action scenes I want to wander off. This movie was mostly a very long action scene. I can see the bones of what would have been a very good single long movie, or two fairly brisk ones – Bilbo gets recruited by a bunch of dwarves on a quest for a ton of cold hard cash, has cool adventures, then people get greedy and violent, and finally the survivors go home. With the existing movies, there was the problem of trying to make a world spanning epic, à la LOTR, out of a relatively short children’s book with a much smaller scale plot, plus a lot of padding that really felt like padding. The whole Gandalf side-plot, which is unconnected to the main story, the generation spanning orc-dwarf feud and the dwarf-elf romance felt shoehorned into the rest of the plot.
In Fellowship fo the ring, I was about 2/3 of the way through the theatrical release when it occurred to me that the actors playing the hobbits aren’t actually three feat high. That’s how good the special effects were. With these movies, I kept getting pulled out of the story with the thought that gravity doesn’t work like that.
I really enjoyed your couple of paragraphs on the wild worms (beginning with “Bilbo mentions the worms off-handedly in a Tookish fit…”).
For me, the concept of the edge of the world (as you say, “hic sunt dracones”) has always retained a sense of truly unknown wonders, even as lots of magic has drained out of so many fantasy concepts I learned 50+ years ago. I think I was exposed at the right age to artwork of an infinite waterfall edging a flat sea and encircled by flying dragons.
You made me see that Bilbo retains that sensawonder, too. Your writing gives my “feels” some intellectual support that I value!
“It’s like riding Space Mountain with the lights on.”
I had that very experience at Disneyland! The ride stopped in the middle, the lights came on, and we realized the track was attached to the walls of what looked like a really boring warehouse — concrete floors, plain walls, fluorescent lighting. So I really appreciate your comparison here!
It’s a shame because Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage have beautiful scenes together–the trust Thorin has in Bilbo after the first movie (which is itself a change) pays off in painful irony in this film as the only person Thorin trusts in his dragon sickness is the one person who has definitely betrayed him.
Mr. Gilkeson,
Your article is well written and hits many (if not all) of the criticism I had with this film. Thank yo. Most importantly, you’ve so accurately conveyed what a fabulous actor Lee Pace is in the role of Thranduil. His scenes are one of the main reasons why I continue to rewatch this trilogy, along with Cumberbatch’s Smaug and Freeman’s turn as Bilbo.
I must say that you delved deep to find a textual reason for Jackson employing one of the most egregious decisions for the battle, the inclusion of the giant worms. Yet, I must dispute this reading of the book (though perhaps I am missing the passage you saw) and do not think Jackson had even the text to hang his hat on.
I do not see mention of tunnels being used to approach the Lonely Mountain. In mentioning tunnels, the text is referring to how the goblins gathered at Gundabad. “Then they marched and gathered by hill and valley, going ever by tunnel and under dark, until around and beneath the great mountain Gundabad of the North, where was their capital, a vast host was assembled[…].” Though Bolg’s intent was to sweep southward, news of the Dragon’s death led them to turn the army east. It is strongly implied that this army traveled eastward “through” the Grey mountains (possibly meaning to go under by tunnel). But the turn southward would not have been through the mountains as there is a long plain north of Erebor (“the broken lands) before one reaches the hills near the Withered Heath. It was certainly a hard march down from the Withered Heath, much like Dain and his army undertook a hard march west from the Iron Hills. Quotes from pg. 237.
Lastly, you may want to make an exception to watching the extended cuts just to see more of Pace’s Thranduil. My son and I also think that the added scene of Thorin’s burial was a worthy inclusion that improved the third movie.
@@.-@ Templar, I think part of the association of Dwarves with axes is not just Thorin, but Tolkien’s statements on Dwarven armament. To my knowledge, the hammer is only ever mentioned in association with smithing work. In war, the weapons most mentioned are axes and mattocks. Now, some historical mattocks had a hammer on one end and a pick on the other, but others use an axe instead of the hammer. Since Tolkien’s mattock-wielding dwarves are said to “hew” their enemies, it would seem that he was referencing the axe/pick-type of mattock.
For what it’s worth: As a biologist, Thranduil’s mount looks a lot more like an Irish Elk than a (North American) moose to me …
S
“…nor are Jackson’s movies reinterpreting J.R.R. Tolkien’s book in new, experimental ways: they are fairly straightforward adaptations.”
It would be generous to call Peter jackson’s Hobbit trilogy “experimental,” but they are far from straightfoward adaptations. Maybe they claim to be, but they’re not.
I wouldn’t say experimental, however. I’d say “self indulgent and soulless.”
Peter Jackson didn’t show the Return to the Shire in LoTR, so to me that shows he never understood the source material. That’s the part that shows that Frodo has grown up, is different from what he left. It’s the final piece of the puzzle that changes the series from a cool action flick into a movie about growing up. To me, when Jackson said he didn’t include it because it bored him as a child, he was saying he hasn’t re-examined the work since he was a child and still sees it with a child’s eyes. That’s why we get dwarves rocketing along an amusement park instead of half-drowned dwarves sealed inside leaking barrels in a desperate attempt to regain their freedom and totally dependent on someone they don’t fully trust to let them out at the end. And that’s why we get “fun” battle scenes instead of, a @3.Me put it above “the sense of bleakness and senseless waste in its aftermath. Not glory and sarcastic quips, but carrion crows and painful death. “. That comment is so good I’m quoting it.
Despite all that, LoTR got more right than it got wrong. Hobbit did not and it’s really hard to see it as anything but a money grab. If someone re-made LoTR in the next 10 years I wouldn’t bother, but I’d go see a different take on the Hobbit in a heartbeat.
@11 Judin: I have the link saved, and keep meaning to go download that Maple Films version—which I know my system can handle—but every time I decide to finally try it, I get hung up by my near technophobic inability to navigate all that’s necessary to do a good job of creating a DVD. *sigh* Maybe someday…because I think there’s probably a good, tight version there I could enjoy.
@18, According to IMDB, the horse that played Thranduil’s elk was named Moose.
Sorry…a bit late to the party…
Have to say…one of, if not, the best review, appraisal, summation, etc., etc., less one comment…well done Austin and all (but one)!
n.b. I believe we’ll need the legendary constitution of the dwarves to stomach the oncoming storm of the real and perceived issues with the upcoming Amazon series…truly looking forward to it…this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD BYE!
They were all so bad. I could sense it the moment they announced a trilogy. Having experienced so much success with the trilogy, you knew the team would be feeling overconfident and be unable to match up to the hype. They grasped at feelings of what worked the first time around, without having earned it the second go-around. It felt like a bad sitcom where everyone had a season break to read all the fan comments…oh you love when this goofy side character spits a one-liner? Well, let’s triple down on that!
The Hobbit was always supposed to be more compact. Yes, the worlds get fleshed out later, but that wasn’t the Hobby and shoveling it in detracts from, instead of adding to, the story.
It’s sad when literally the only flashes or memories I have from the films are cringe moments. It’s more a vehicle for a great Rifftrax than anything to be watched or enjoyed in any seriousness.
@21 srEDIT
Sorry for late reply! Maybe you’ll never see this, but just in case; you don’t need to turn it into a DVD. I used Chrome cast or an HDMI cable from my laptop, as I recall.
@25: I do see it…thanks! I may try that! (The thing is, I also *want* to have a DVD to set aside.)
The TL;DR of my opinion of these movies is: I rewatch the extended editions of LOTR at least once a year; I haven’t rewatched the Jackson Hobbit movies since I bought them (although I’ve been in the room when others were watching).
Things I wanted to see that I didn’t: A whole village of bear-people. (Beorn actually happy!) Partying in Mirkwood. Hospitality in the Last Homely House. Just generally people being happy and things being brightly colored, dammit.
Things I saw a lot of but didn’t want to: Somebody needed to sit Jackson down and tell him that 90 percent of the creepy crawlies, mutilations, gross “jokes” (the Trolls–gag!), etc., needed to go.
Moments he got splendidly right (even if only by stepping out of the way): Bilbo’s combined hero worship of and exasperation with Thorin. Tree climbing in Mirkwood. Goblins making merry menacingly underneath the Misty Mountains. Gollum. Smaug. So much depended on Smaug–I in fact grew up loving the 1977 movie and its soundtrack album, and I was so happy that Smaug in the Jackson movies actually matches or exceeds the Rankin-Bass Smaug. I also liked the purging of Dol Guldur, and I thought that Galadriel’s transformation was to show her calling up the perilous power of her Ring.
Stuff he added or didn’t object to that actually worked IMO: The madness of King Thorin. Lots of the character bits between the Dwarves. Tauriel grew on me, although I still feel annoyed at the missed opportunity for a female Beorning. And that bittersweet unrequited love of Gandalf for Galadriel? Surprising, but–it worked.
@11 is right. I own the original films, but from here on out, I will only WATCH the Maple Films edit. It even has an “intermission” where you swap discs, effectively splitting it into 2 2-hour films, which is what they should have been.
Usually I don’t mind when a beloved book of mind is made into a film but these were a complete travesty. There’s not even a fine film that could be made of these by a great editing job — to quote a certain film, they stink, stank, stunk.
By the way, the Andy Serkis narration of The Hobbit that came out recently is absolutely spot-on. Highly recommend.