recollect when Peter Jackson announced he was splitting J.R.R. Tolkien ’s slim volume The Hobbit into three motion picture ? Even with Jackson ’s OCD attention to detail , that seemed too much — and the intact internet vex that it would be all bloat and no heart . Well , the internet was right , at least about the third movie .
The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies has none of the character - building moments , nor the sense of drear forboding , that made The Hobbit : The Desolation of Smaug the best of this trilogy . Like The Hobbit : An Unexpected Journey , it ’s incredibly uneven , often pointless , and full of battle scenes that miss any sentiency of gravitas because they are so emotionally decontextualized . in the end the trouble here is n’t the acting or directing . It ’s quite simply one of the most clearcut cases I ’ve ever find out of a trilogy that failed because it should have been a single movie .
In every Hobbit film , there have been standout moments of intensiveness and awesomeness that any cast and crew should be proud of . Beorn ’s family . The fight against the spiders . The moment when Thorin thanks Bilbo for saving his life . The passion and weirdness of Smaug . All the things with the Grant Wood elves . I ’m sure you have your favorites , too .
The trouble is that these moment were sandwiched between story bloat so incredible that it really induces amnesia about the story itself . I get myself question , as the final struggle began in The Battle of the Five Armies , who the five army in reality were . Wait , there are two group of orcs ? And why are the gremlin struggle the dwarves again ? This war had been bubble across three huge moving-picture show , released over three years , and every ounce of narration momentum was lost . There is just no way to sustain a story like this over that amount of clip , no matter how many extra scene you add together of Gandalf fighting Sauron , or Thorin freaking out from “ flying lizard illness . ”
The Battle of Five Armies has a plot that careens between Smaug ’s onset on Laketown , Thorin ’s psychological struggle with his maniac lust for gold , and the eponymous battle between those five Army whose motivations you ’ll be hard - pressed to figure out . Unfortunately , it palpate like the issues raise by the two previous movies were resolved within about 20 minutes of the start — go out us with almost two 60 minutes of denoument .
In the previous film , Bilbo made a convincing transition from reluctant fellow traveler to truly gay poor boy . But in The Battle of Five Armies , he ’s just coasting . He does some cagy things , but there ’s no aroused journey — we ’re just watching the further adventures of Bilbo being a great guy . And that ’s frankly not as exciting as watching Bilbo determine how steely his homely Hobbit nerves can really be .
Our tending is supposed to be riveted by Thorin or else , who has taken back the family throne but is falling fair game to the same amber lust that was his grandfather ’s fall . We see the once - stouthearted leader come down into incoherent gumming , a crown askew on his head , issuing uncanny mandates about keeping all Smaug ’s cache for himself . When the residents of Laketown come asking for their ploughshare , and the wood elves demand their stolen jewels , he refuses — and the other dwarf loyally ( but reluctantly ) carry out his orders .
Sadly there is no real spectacular tension here . Thorin is an epic character with a racy destiny , but little psychological depth . Asking us to manage about his nervous breakdown this late in the series is too little too late — peculiarly when we already have a character , Bilbo , whose psychological complexity has already been established in a pleasing direction . The same goes for Thorin ’s orc curse , whom we ’re suppose to look at as some kind of foil for the dwarf leader . I would jazz to have watched a trilogy where the orcs actually had interesting motivations and interior lives . But alternatively of giving us a multi - layered enemy , these movies gave us little more than demon . We never genuinely understand the orcs ’ troth , nor why they ally with Sauron .
Despite all its flaws , this movie does cede good battle . Of course you should carry nothing less from Jackson , but he and his team at Weta Workshop have outdone themselves here . There are giant cyborg troll ( no , really ) , gargantuan louse , dwarves riding on giant pigs , woodwind instrument brownie on their mega - mooses ( OK , caribou , but I liked pretending it was a moose ) , unbelievable weaponry , virtuoso fights , and elf / dwarf tactical awesomeness . Even the multitude of Laketown get to quetch some prat . But as I said earlier , the battle does n’t experience terrific or portentous the room it might have if we ’d seen it after two hours of picture instead of seven . Instead , it feel like a romp — complete with some really awkward attempts at slapstick . Which — there ’s nothing wrong with a romp . But when an epic journey of three movie ends with drag jokes and campy speeches about love , it ’s a letdown .
If you ’ve already seen the first two Hobbit picture show , you should dead bond it out and observe this one . Just think to keep your outlook low and smoke a little twist of Hobbit herb to make the whole thing go down easier .
MoviesThe Hobbit
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