The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies | Film Review

As we and the rest of the world have talked about ad nauseam, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a small story about little people searching for something larger than themselves. Because of its limited focus, when Jackson announced that his adaptation of the book would take three movies, many baulked. “What?” they asked. “It’s a short book, easily read in one evening. How can you stretch that over three films?” You dig into The Silmarillian, that’s how. Tolkien’s collection of tales that fill out the history of Middle Earth, from its very creation up to The Hobbit and beyond. The Hobbitmight indeed be a small story, but there were other things going on in Middle Earth beyond Bilbo’s adventure, things with implications that won’t reach full fruition until The Lord of the Rings. The question then becomes, should Jackson have just stuck to the story told within The Hobbit, or did he do the right thing in broadening the canvas so that it serviced the full story Tolkien crafted in the years following that small book’s publication. That’s a question you’ll have to answer for yourself.

As for Jackson’s take on the final chapter of his films, I would say that – all in all – The Battle of the Five Armies was a fine ending (for now anyway). Sure, yes, it’s not perfect, and some problems are considerable, but none are enough to bring down what, by all rights,should be considered a cinematic achievement of the highest order.

I don’t think there’s a director working today who knows how to handle large scale battles as well as Peter Jackson, and in Battle of the Five Armies – as the name implies – there’s a lot of fighting going on. Humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and a veritable zoo of the odd and deformed throw themselves into deadly combat before Erebor, the now not-so-lonely mountain. With thousands of figures fighting on screen it could have turned into an inscrutable mess, but because of Jackson’s deft direction and the amazing production design, keeping track of who is where is fairly easy to do, so the battle has a flow that works. Is it as exciting as the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers or Battle of Pelennor Fields inReturn of the King? No, but so what? Those are incredibly high bars to clear, and even getting close is wonder enough.

Speaking of direction and production design, I’m glad that Jackson and Weta Workshop were able to bringThe Hobbit to the screen, because in doing so they bring a firm sense of continuity to the films. These may be different elves from those we saw in Rivendell, but their sense of design is similar enough that we feel comfortable seeing them on screen, theyfeel familiar. The same with the dwarves and the orcs, and that’s something you can only get when you have the same people working across the entire Middle Earth saga. I will forever be curious what Guillermo del Toro would have brought to theaters had he directed, but Jackson knows this world, lives it and breathes it, has traveled its length and breadth before, and that experience is irreplaceable.

But, no matter how pretty the images are or complicated the story, it’s ultimately the characters that matter most, and the cast that brings them to the life in Five Armies is strong. We knew Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett would deliver the goods, having seen them in these roles previously, but it’s on the shoulders of Middle Earth new comers Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage that most of the weight fell. Luckily they were more than talented enough to carry their roles through to the end. Orlando Bloom lacks much of the humor and charm that he brought to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is a real shame, and useless characters like Alfrid played by Ryan Gage cause a few too many scenes to drag. There is also an instance of what some might call stunt casting in Five Armies, where a new character is introduced in glorious fashion, but to say any more of that would spoil what is otherwise a great reveal. Taken as a whole, the cast of Five Armies isn’t as strong as those from Lord of the Rings, nor are the characters as rich, but my complaints are minor at best.My only real quibble with the film is the opening. At the end of The Desolation of Smaug, tiny Bilbo watched in horror as the great fire dragon flew from the Kingdom Under The Mountain to lay waste to nearby Lake Town. That is precisely where Five Armies starts. Unfortunately, the waste laying doesn’t last very long. All too quickly Smaug’s part of the story is finished, and it ends up feeling anticlimactic. Not exactly a great way to start a movie. Were I Jackson, I would have put all that at the end of Desolation and amped up the battle between Bard and Smaug. Then we could have ended that film on the humans of Lake Town walking away from the devastation toward Erebor. In my opinion that would have been a solid ending with a bit of closure, and Five Armies could have focused all of its narrative attention on the battle for the dwarven kingdom.Nitpicks aside, Battle of the Five Armies is a solid movie with some great performances and moments of true character development. It ends on a perfect note, and I think it’s a movie that will become more beloved as we get some distance from it, as well as the rest of the Middle Earth films. Someday I will spend an entire weekend watching Jackson’s six movies – the Extended Editions of course – back to back, and I have no doubt that I will come away from the experience thrilled, tearful, and completely satisfied.

Thank you, Peter Jackson. Your Middle Earth films will long stand tall, a feat unmatched in all of cinema history. You took stories that should have been impossible to adapt, and you adapted the hell out of them. I, and geeks the world over, are forever in your debt. You changed the movie landscape, and nothing and no one will ever be the same. Now go home, close your door, and rest. You’ve earned it.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

Justin Macumber
The Hollywood Outsider