The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies and the Fight for the Lonely Mountain

I’m probably going to go a slightly different path on this review versus my previous film reviews about the Hobbit and not give you a standard walk-through. I mean lets be honest, most people have read the book now anyways and know the story based on where the previous movie ended and what happened at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings (for those that have no clue … here’s a hint – Bilbo lives!) and for those that haven’t there are lots of other sites online that will do this for you. I think in this review (which will still contain *SPOILERS*) I am going to focus more on my opinion and thoughts and while I might at times refer to specific elements of the movie, that won’t be the primary way throughout this guide.

OK, with all that out of the way, lets get down to it shall we? A prequel trilogy made years after the films everyone loves always has a lot to live up to, and anyone who sat through the Star Wars prequels knows how that can go. The Battle of the Five Armies has the job of wrapping up the Hobbit and leading straight into the Lord of the Rings, which is a lot to ask of one film.

The Battle of the Five Armies is the 3rd part of Peter Jackson’s rather epic trilogy of the Hobbit. The Hobbit (book) while only a relatively short book (especially in relation to the Lord of the Rings) was targeted more towards a younger audience than its successors and that is evident in the first two films also. There is singing & lots of humor in the earlier films and while there are some darker sequences and scenes the earlier films manage to balance this out. By contrast however the Battle of the Five Armies is much darker in context and scope. It focuses a lot on “lust” – in this case, the lust for gold and how that can drive even the strongest of willed (Thorin Oakenshield) to ruin.

Not a lot of book left to film

By the time The Desolation of Smaug finished, there were only the last few chapters of the book left. Smaug comes down on Lake-town, the dwarves, elves and men all fall out over who gets the treasure in the mountain, and then everyone ends up fighting the orcs anyway. Bard brings the dragon down with the black arrow, the people of Lake-town end up camped in the ruins of Dale, and Thranduil turns up with an elf army wanting his share of the gold. That’s not a lot to stretch over a two and a half hour film, and like The Matrix Revolutions the last part of the trilogy ends up being mostly one enormous battle with a bit of story either side of it.

Well I think its fairly obvious that Peter Jackson also has realized that he won’t be revisiting Middle Earth again (unless of course he is able to do something with the Silmarillion) – he has perhaps gone a bit overboard in this movie as to some extent it almost feels like a travelogue of/for New Zealand while at the same time its very obviously a going away present for himself. Every chance he gets there’s another sweeping shot of mountains and snow and armies marching across a valley, and while it all looks gorgeous on the big screen, you do start to notice how often the story stops so the camera can take in the view. It’s beautiful, I just don’t think all of it needed to be there.

Legolas, Dain and the things that bugged me

Some key complaints that I had are probably as follows. Legolas first. While I know in my previous post I indicated that his inclusion while not necessary didn’t really detract from the book, in this film it really did. His scenes were pointless really and overly complicated. The fight sequence with Bolg on the crumbling stone bridge up at Ravenhill was way too long and the whole sequence with the bat was a bit ridiculous. He isn’t even in the book, so every minute spent on him is a minute taken away from Bilbo and the dwarves we’ve followed for two films already.

Dain the dwarf, Thorin’s cousin, was actually really funny & both myself and the children laughed as he knocked the orc’s out right and left … but doing it by headbutting them? That seems to be a bit silly doesn’t it? Is he only hard headed dwarf? If it was that easy, why bother with an axe or hammer? And I wasn’t the only one who found much to enjoy but a few stumbles in how Dain and the rest of the battle were handled. Thorin’s whole fight sequence too was perhaps overly belabored and could have ended sooner, it goes on and on across the frozen waterfall long after you’ve got the idea.

Not enough Bilbo, and Smaug gone too soon

Bilbo & Smaug – perhaps my biggest complaint about them was that we didn’t really get enough time with them. Smaug specifically appeared only to die in the opening minutes of the film – this should probably have been concluded in the previous film as it simply didn’t have the same impact. Ending The Desolation of Smaug with the dragon flying off towards Lake-town made a great cliffhanger, but it meant the third film opens with its best villain and then kills him off before the title card, so a whole year of waiting gets paid off in a few minutes.

Bilbo has the same problem in a different way. It’s his story, it’s called The Hobbit after all, but once the armies turn up he gets lost in the crowd. He’s there trying to talk sense into Thorin about the gold and sneaking the Arkenstone out to Bard and Thranduil, and then for long stretches of the battle he’s just one more face in the chaos while the elves and orcs take over the screen. I’d have happily swapped some of the elves for more of him. The film does at least give him the last word, back home at Bag End with his things being auctioned off and then, years later, getting ready for his eleventy-first birthday party, which leads straight into the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring.

An epic battle, but could it have been two films?

Now lets talk about the positive – this movie was epic. The fight scenes while long were glorious & the CGI is immeasurably better than it was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While the sequence with Gandalf and Sauron was perhaps also a bit contrived, it showed in no uncertain way, why these wizards and Elf Kings and Queens were paramount in the land. While you would not expect a wizard to be a martial arts expert at the same time, their skill is evident and they have power!

However with that being said could this have been shrunk to two movies and retained its impact? Overall I’d have to say yes. While the fighting was glorious – it was also long and in parts your mind tended to wander. I’ve already mentioned my complaint about Smaug and I think if he’d died in the previous film, it would have definitely had a much greater impact as with a year in between films you lose the awe that he inspired. Legolas as a whole could have probably been cut from this film without it hurting the continuity in any significant way (although I do have to admit the final line where he’s told to seek out a ranger in the west is quite cool).

So why did he do it? Why did he take a small childrens’ book and transform it into this huge 3 film epic? Its probably a question that only Peter Jackson can truly answer, but he has stated that he wanted all of his Middle Earth films to work together in one cohesive whole. This is why he’s transformed a children’s story into a darker and more grim tale … one that works well with the Lord of the Rings. Personally I’m not sure if he was successful and I can see that this might be the first (& only) time that a Director’s cut of a film will actually shrink the length of a film versus increasing it. I know that if he doesn’t do it – someone else will & will also give us the film we all really want to see.

Should Legolas have stayed out of The Hobbit altogether, or did you enjoy having him back? Tell me in the comments.