By Brett Blake The climactic final entry in THE HOBBIT trilogy, THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES once again displays director Peter Jackson’s seemingly boundless enthusiasm and desire to please the audience, because the film - while not reaching the heights of the previous film, THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG - is an enormously entertaining adventure romp that manages to engage, thrill, and even lend the story some emotional heft not yet explored up to this point in the trilogy. Beginning at the exact moment the last movie ended, the story opens with an attack by the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) on the people of Lake-Town. In the aftermath, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and the dwarves - led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) - hole up in the mountain known as Erebor, and find themselves embroiled in a dispute with both the surviving people of Lake-Town - led by Bard (Luke Evans) - and an army of elves under the command of Thranduil (Lee Pace); each camp has a claim to certain riches inside the mountain, and conflict ensues. But unbeknownst to all parties, an evil force marches on Erebor, intent on wiping all of them out. More than the previous two movies, BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES feels the most handicapped by the idea of splitting the J.R.R. Tolkien novel into three films (more on that below), in the sense that both AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG still basically adhere to classical ideas of story structure. With this film, however, it’s much more of a two-act story, with the second half of the movie being - more or less - one giant, extended action sequence. The good news is that said sequence - the titular battle itself - is marvelous stuff. It wisely doesn’t try to compete with the scope of the battles found in the LORD OF THE RINGS films, but it compensates by providing a wide variety of combat; yes, there are huge armies charging towards each other, but there’s also close-quarters fighting, as well as some inspired bits of animal/monster/creature mayhem. There are many stirring and rousing (and even heart-wrenching) moments, and ultimately it does feel like the three-film wait was worth it in that sense, at least. There’s a ton of other great stuff in here, too. Bard emerges as probably the most noble and heroic figure of the whole trilogy, and his concern for his fellow Lake-Towners (and his family) makes him easy to root for. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) get more to do this time around, both in terms of action and emotion. The production design is as impressive as ever; the ruined city of Dale, where the survivors of Smaug’s Lake-Town attack take refuge, is as impressive as any set in this or the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogies. Howard Shore’s music reaches its apotheosis in this installment, underscoring the climactic events with both power and grace, and building on his established themes in fun ways; it’s the best score of 2014. But most importantly, the story’s key element - Thorin’s increasing madness and delusion, and what comes as a result - is handled with just the right touch; Armitage sells the hell out of it, and his interactions with others (particularly with Martin Freeman’s Bilbo) land with exactly the kind of impact they need. The ultimate conclusion to Thorin’s character arc is equally well-handled, and it makes for an entirely satisfying payoff to both his character’s journey and his relationship with Bilbo. Now that the three films are completed and released to the world, we can - for the first time - fully examine the decision to split Tolkien’s source novel (not a long book by any stretch of the imagination) into three movies. Personally, it’s never much bothered me, but it’s been a consistent source of criticism (and even ridicule), so it’s worth dissection. Fundamentally, THE HOBBIT is an episodic book packed with incident, so to attempt to rush through it in a single 2+-hour movie was never in cards (you’d end up rushing past so many cool incidents that need to breathe), but on the other end of the spectrum (and having now seen the completed trilogy) taking 300 pages worth of written word and blasting that out into nearly nine hours of cinema does seem like a bit of overkill. This story did not need to be three movies (that’s not to imply the individual movies themselves aren’t good, because they definitely are), and while THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES clocks in with the shortest running time of any of the HOBBIT films so far, it is paradoxically the one which also feels the most bloated and overblown. It is a movie which is adapting only the last handful of the novel’s chapters, and is essentially 140 minutes of narrative climax. Now, that makes for a very entertaining thrill ride of a film, but you can at times feel Jackson reaching for every small moment and beat to boost the running time. The biggest example in that regard would be the opening Smaug attack; it may be a spectacular action setpiece (and, boy, is it; it’s probably the best single scene in the whole movie), but it so clearly needed to be the finale to the previous film, rather than the opening to this one. Its inclusion here feels more like tidying up unfinished business, instead of an organic entry point to this story, and while the spirit of Smaug symbolically and thematically lives on in Thorin’s madness, it’s jarring to have the big villain of your second film dealt with in the first ten minutes of your third. THE HOBBIT would have been best suited as a pair of films, each of which could have had very strong narrative contours, rather than the slightly muddled story arcs the existing three films have. But that’s all basically Monday morning quarterbacking. Whether the story really demanded it or not, we’ve got a trilogy of HOBBIT films, and ultimately, I think that’s fine. THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES is above-average action-adventure cinema, and it’s a completely fulfilling and entertaining ride. Now at the end of director Peter Jackson’s 20-odd hours in Middle-Earth, I can honestly say that I enjoyed all of, and would be ready for more. It’s a special thing he and his crew have pulled off (whatever you might think of the respective merits of the individual films), and they deserve admiration for providing a heart-felt, deeply un-cynical send-off for Tolkien’s world and characters in cinematic form.
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