Back again, finally – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

1. As if to further drive home how muddled the saga of Bilbo has become, the film opens with material that by all rights should have been included in The Desolation of Smaug. Because, well, Smaug. Remember when Boromir died at the end of the The Fellowship of the Ring? Remember how Shelob was saved for The Return of the King? Those were directorial command decisions that Jackson made for plot precision, so that each movie could stand on its own, without having to lean too heavily on its predecessor or successor. Here we have not one but two bouts of in media res mop-up duty: the death of the dreaded dragon, and the rescue of Gandalf from the Necromancer’s clutches by the trio of Galadriel, Elrond and Saruman. Both have their share of visuals and excellent action beats — Smaug laying waste, literally, and Saruman and Elrond battling the wraith-forms of dead kings, the soon-to-be Nazgul — but they nevertheless are unmistakably housecleaning of the last movie’s loose threads. The latter especially functions as little more than a curtain call for the cast of movies that came out a decade ago.
2. Never have things felt so stretched out, like the old familiar adage of “butter over too much bread.” One sequence in particular — Thorin having a vision of how the gold of Erebor is consuming him — felt like it went on for days. Dialogue is overwrought, weighed down by artificial heft. Much of this has to do with the fact that once Smaug meets his end thanks to a well-placed spear-tip, there’s little left but the titular conflagration.
3. The good news is that this conflict is well-staged, with all the Jackson hallmarks. Dwarves atop monstrous boars, carrying majestic hammers. Legolas and his acrobatics more video-gamey than ever. Lee Pace’s Thanduil mowing down orcs with his caribou mount, its rack like the cow-catcher on a train. Giants. Hell, even Dune sandworms make an appearance. And, of course, a final throwdown between Thorin and Azog, the Brock Lesnar of Middle-earth — which has a Fatal Attraction component, of all things.
4. If you’re looking forward to Beorn’s contribution to the big battle, don’t blink, because he gets all of three seconds. For a trilogy that has dragged so many things out, it’s remarkable the iconography that gets short shrift.
5. Fans of Head of the Class — or at least its last season — will be happy with Billy Connolly’s turn as Dain. He rides the aforementioned boar. Or at least his CGI avatar does.
6. The forced “romance” between an elf and a dwarf remains unbelievably ridiculous. I had to stifle laughs.
7. Before we end we have to pay homage to the two actors who’ve provided these films with their measure of quality. Walking out of the theater I felt a slight but genuine bit of sadness, stemming from this being the last appearance of Ian Mckellen as old friend Gandalf. No one performer has been more responsible for the foothold this saga has gained in the movie-loving consciousness, and none has done more to make it all feel so real. And Freeman — enough said on that score. There’s a nice, quiet, dialogue-free moment between these two toward the end, where they sit down next to one another on the ground, Gandalf fills his pipe, and we watch all that passes between them. I wish the movie had been more things like that, and less Thorin being all pissy and growly and dragon-sick. Both deserve better.

This isn’t a bad movie, but like its kin it’s not great, either. Audiences looking for a two-hour diversion won’t be disappointed — though they might be a tad befuddled with the places and names that materialize out of nowhere. “The Goblin-King of Gobbledygook,” etc. And more discerning viewers will be left rolling their eyes at the stretches with all the excitement of balancing a checkbook.

One is left wondering how The Hobbit would have turned out if Jackson had tackled it before diving into the part of Tolkien’s work that was truly epic in scale. Would he have been so eager to graft arcs onto what has been and always shall be a treasured story? We’ll never know. What we do know is that these three movies have been misfires. Skilled misfires, but still misfires. If Jackson had been on that tower firing arrows at Smaug, he never would have found the missing scale.

Two and a half Arkenstones out of five.

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