The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
  The Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies
Released 12/17/14

The conclusion of Peter Jackson's second Middle Earth trilogy invades your local Cineplex this week. In the previous trilogy, Return of the King was such an epic film that it would take a lot for Jackson to conclude this series on the same high note.  It's a daunting task.  Was it successful?  The cast from the first two films (Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, and Lee Pace to name a few) returns for the third and final ride.

You can take an educated guess as to what occurs if you have viewed The Desolation of Smaug.  Enraged and chased from the Lonely Mountain by Thorin Oakenshield and his allies, the dragon, Smaug lays fiery waste to the nearby human city of Laketown in retaliation.  After the dragon's attack, the survivors are left without a home and look to Thorin for aid to rebuild. 

Unfortunately, Thorin has been infected with the dragon's sickness that is causing him to grow quite mad and paranoid.  He orders his followers to barricade the Lonely Mountain from all outsiders and obsessively searches for the lost and legendary Dwarf jewel, the Arkenstone, among the mountain's treasures.  And, to make matters worse, Thorin is losing his faculties at the worst possible time.  His old enemy, Azog, is approaching Erebor with a massive Orc army.  Thranduil, king of the Woodland Elves, has also arrived with a large Elven army and joined with the survivors of Laketown against the new Dwarf king.  For his own selfish reasons, Thranduil, is seeking the treasures within the mountain.  With this many armies at their front door and their king not quite himself, the dwarves within the mountain have a bleak outlook on their survival. 

Oh, and there's that small matter of an ancient presence from the past gaining power that threatens Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, and human alike. 

The Battle of the Five Armies is a more than adequate conclusion to this saga.  It has the feel of exactly what it is, an appetizer to a larger meal.  And, that was part of the problem for me.  Lord of the Rings was so epic in scope and consequence that The Hobbit may have been doomed to fail in comparison.  Although there was impending gloom in this movie, it just didn't carry the same weight.  It didn't quite have the feel that "everything is going to Hell if the good guys don't win."  

I've never read J.R.R. Tolkien's books, so I'm not really qualified to determine how closely Peter Jackson followed his vision.  But, I think one thing that removed some the grave nature of this trilogy as compared to LOTR was that the impending return of Sauron was pretty much pushed to the fringe in this film more than it was in the previous two.  Aside from one 10-15 minute sequence in The Battle of the Five Armies, there's not much reference to the carnage that is to come.  Some of the principle characters are worried about his coming, but, an outsider is not exactly sure why unless he/she has watched the first trilogy.

On the positive side, you can see every penny that was spent on the sweeping landscapes and 3D effects.  The film has a magnificent look like its predecessors. 

The audience finally gets a taste of  some characters in action.  Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) has a creepy demon-elf scene dispatching Sauron's presence which is terrific.  Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) display some fancy battle prowess fending off Ringwraiths (why doesn't Gandalf fight like this).  And, there's always the welcome sight of king ninja-elf himself, Legolas (Orlando Bloom), who is up to his usual master archery and aerial acrobatics.  Notice how a majority of the cool factor I mention here involves Elves?  Just sayin'. 

The Hobbit is to Lord of the Rings what Episodes I-III were to Episodes IV-VI in the Star Wars series.  Don't misunderstand.  The Hobbit trilogy is so much better than Episodes I-III.  But, it just didn't quite have the same grandeur about it overall.  The Battle of the Five Armies does provide a few good battle scenes, but nothing on the grandiose scale of Return of the King or even the Two Towers.  It's an appropriate ending to the series, but not an always spectacular one.  It's worth viewing, but I'm not sure how memorable it will be.  I'm not usually an advocate of making movies longer, but, maybe The Hobbit should have been two movies instead of three. 

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

***1/2 stars


Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.