The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: A Review

From the beginning Director Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Hobbit have been something of a failed experiment. An attempt to both stretch J.R.R. Tolkien's sparse original novel of Middle-Earth over three films and present it with the same majestic scope of his Lord of the Rings adaptations from a decade ago, people ranging from Tolkien purists to average movie-goers have questioned his approach and execution of the material. But the caveat hanging over the whole series has been that however good or bad the individual films have been, no one would be able to have a complete opinion on The Hobbit series until all three had been released. So now with the release of the last film, The Battle of the Five Armies, will the series come together at the finale or be the bloated mess everyone assumed it would be?

To catch you up on the story so far, well to do hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has been somewhat reluctantly shanghaied into an adventure by the wizard Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) and a company of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to reclaim the dwarves' ancestral home from the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch). Having ousted the dragon at the end of the previous film, the dwarves now have to deal with the various parties they've aggrieved along their journey. From the men whose town they accidentally loosed the dragon on to the elves whose dungeon they escaped to the orcs who've been chasing them over the three films, all of them show up outside the dwarves' front door looking for some payback. Bilbo is caught in the middle of them and may have the only way to avert an all-out war, if he can move fast enough. Meanwhile, Gandalf has been having his own problems. He's been captured by a mysterious sorcerer and has no way of warning his friends of the orc army coming to take the dwarves' home.


The biggest problem of all three of these films has been pacing. That's partly a fault of how the book was structured, but each of the movies has suffered from not knowing when to take things slow and when to ramp things up. But whereas the other two ran half an hour over the end of their stories, Battle of the Five Armies just shifts into fifth gear and stays there for over an hour of screentime. After a suspenseful buildup in the film's first third, which catches the audience up on all of the different characters and effectively lays the stakes for the conflict, once the titular battle begins it turns into almost non-stop action. This results in exhausting the audience, so that even if you are invested the characters and the outcome there will be a point where every near-death or harrowing escape will just bore instead of excite you. What the film could have benefitted from is a break in the battle, a chance for the audience to catch their breath and readjust before going into the climax.

Tauriel,  aka "Why is Legolas in this?"

Speaking of the battle, while Jackson's choreography of action scenes and go for broke attitude is on par with Lord of the Rings his special effects team doesn't back him up. Most of the evil orc army is created digitally and while it's technically impressive to see such highly detailed skin and metal textures rendered with computer graphics, it has the effect of making the orcs look more obviously fake than a similar makeup job would have. Because of that much of the action, and this film is mostly action, resembles a video game where you play as Orlando Bloom. This special effects failure carries over to the editing. The cuts between wide sweeping shots of thousands of digital extras marching across the battlefield and close-ups of the actors with their prop weapons slamming into real costumed extras are jarring, making what should have emotional impact from showing the human cost of the battle just as weightless as the rest of the action. Still as big-screen spectacle goes it's hard to beat, even if it's just well-made eye candy.

Going back to the pacing, one thing Battle of the Five Armies has over the previous two Hobbit films is a better division of character screentime. After Desolation of Smaug shoved Bilbo more into the background to give the spotlight over to dwarf leader and deuteragonist Thorin, they are back on much more equal footing here. The greatest asset in that regard is a heavy focus on their friendship early in the film where Thorin reflects on how close they've grown over the adventure and Bilbo's trying to steer Thorin away from the greed over the dragon's treasure which has begun to cloud his judgement. These character moments are actually the strongest scenes in the film and it's a shame that they're sidelined by the huge action scenes because it's here where the actors shine. And the cast is excellent; Martin Freeman is still bringing his restrained English exasperation to Bilbo, Richard Armitage gives Thorin a respectable character arc of a leader accepting responsibility for his people, and Ian Mckellen's Gandalf is still the grumpy wizard par excellence. Even the side characters are well-played, nobody feels like a stock archetype, except for maybe Orlando Bloom's Legolas who is strangely flat and mainly here to shoot orcs during the battle. Why he couldn't have been replaced by fan favorite elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) from the previous film is anyone's guess. She does everything he does but has more emotional range and is more interesting to watch.

Thranduil (Lee Pace) Elfking & Elk rider.
Because nobody in this fucking movie rides a horse.

So now that we've come to the end, how much of a failed experiment has The Hobbit trilogy been? Well, while it certainly isn't the bloated Lord of the Rings cash-in that many have decried it as, it isn't what the filmmakers wanted out of a follow-up either. Its problems are the same problems I've highlighted about Battle of the Five Armies, the pacing and the action. All three of these films have felt padded with extraneous scenes and overly long runtimes, taking what is a slight novel and blowing it up to a size the story can't support. And while Peter Jackson's lack of restraint toward the action scenes often makes them visually inventive and entertaining, this also leads them to feeling cartoony and silly in contrast to the serious tone. But the biggest fault of The Hobbit is not justifying their existence. There doesn't seem to be a reason this trilogy was made other than giving Peter Jackson and co. an excuse to return to Middle-Earth. Ultimately these films are unnecessary, if entertainingly so.

The Battle of the Five Armies is a satisfying conclusion to The Hobbit series, a microcosm of its faults and successes. It looks spectacular, the characters are still fun, and the massive action setpieces make for great spectacle even if they wear out their welcome after a while. As fun fantasy adventure goes, you could do far worse. If you haven't made up your mind on The Hobbit yet or are firmly in the negative camp on it, there isn't much here in the final film to change your mind. But if you've been invested thus far, you won't walk away disappointed.

Final Score: 3/5