The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I guess you can’t really blame the studio for wanting to stretch The Hobbit into three high-grossing movies, especially considering the project’s hefty price tag. But from a narrative standpoint, the trilogy could have easily been trimmed quite a bit and condensed into just two films. That fact is more apparent than ever in The Battle of the Five Armies. Even though it’s by far the shortest of Peter Jackson’s six J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations, it still seems unnecessarily long and inflated.

After the first two entries, there isn’t a whole lot left from Tolkien’s novel to film besides the eponymous battle. The movie does wrap up the cliffhanger involving the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) from last year’s film (a little anticlimactically, unfortunately). It also brings to conclusion all its added-on prequel elements leading into the events of Jackson’s other trilogy, which are promptly forgotten once finished (makes you wonder why they even bothered with them in the first place). Otherwise, its focus is squarely on the battle, pitting the Dwarves of Erebor and their kin against the Elves of Mirkwood and the remaining citizens of Lake-town, then all of them against two armies of orcs, trolls, and other nasty servants of Sauron. When the sides aren’t engaged in combat, the characters are discussing and priming for battle, or glumly reflecting on those lost in it afterward. And any dangling subplots are either finished on the battlefield or left in the dust without a satisfactory completion.

Even Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is somewhat brushed aside. Instead, the driving character arc is that of Richard Armitage’s Dwarf king Thorin, whose lust for riches ignites the whole conflict. Herein lies the only bit of substance in the picture, exploring the character’s madness of greed. A great sequence—probably the only use of special effects that doesn’t involve fighting or destruction—hauntingly illustrates his sanity lost in (quite literally) a sea of gold. This turn, however, is more than a little jarring. Thorin was a tortured but honorable character in the first two films, but is suddenly cold and paranoid in this one. His downfall festers a little too quickly to believe. It’s little matter, though, as he just as quickly reverts back to action hero mode to join in the combat.

The battle scenes are reasonably entertaining, if not nearly as impressive as those we already saw in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (not sure if it’s the high frame rate or the 3D, but the armies look more obviously like CGI). Eventually, though, it gets a little tiring as it goes on and on and on. You can really feel the filmmakers reaching to expand every element they can to justify a third movie, and the final result is very bloated. And while Jackson is good at staging a memorable action sequence, a couple here—a swordfight on ice (seriously), and especially a duel inside a structure as it falls to pieces faster than a Jenga tower—reach a stratosphere of ridiculousness only someone with unlimited money and no one to tell them “no” could possibly reach. By the time the film finally reaches its end, there's more of an exhausted relief than emotional or narrative payoff.

Contrast that with The Lord of the Rings’ long but very satisfying final chapter The Return of the King (deletion of Saruman aside), and you have the biggest difference, I think, between Jackson’s two trilogies. The Lord of the Rings had an epic scope while still making time to tell strong character stories, in addition to being a great action and special effects spectacle. The Hobbit trilogy has ultimately been only a spectacle. It was an enjoyable spectacle with a lot of fun stuff (the second movie The Desolation of Smaug being the best of them). But while its big brothers are film classics, The Hobbit rings a little hollow, this entry most of all.