Well,
three years and eight hours later, The
Hobbit finally comes to a close. The Battle of the Five Armies has its
moments. Martin Freeman is predictably
wonderful, some of the titular battle is impressive, and Galadriel being
hardcore awesome is always appreciated.
However, when it comes to this movie, “needless” is the main adjective
that springs to mind.
Remember
the big “this just got real”
cliffhanger at the end of The Desolation
of Smaug? Taken care of in about the
first ten minutes. After that, it’s all
dragon fever and arguing over gold and non-canon love triangles and endless
fighting and people dying prettily.
Whoever didn’t try to dissuade Peter Jackson from believing this small
portion of the book warranted an entire movie, especially one that approaches
two-and-a-half hours, is the cinematic definition of a good person standing by
doing nothing.
I’m not
denying that the battle is cool, but there’s way, way too much of it. When half
of your movie is the same continuous battle, you’re not doing it right. Early in the fighting, it’s neat to watch the
synchronized movements of the elf warriors, and Billy Connolly makes a fine
dwarf general, but it’s not long before it becomes too much of the same. It’s hurt by the fact that the dwarves we’ve
been following for the first two movies don’t even join the action until halfway
through the fight. Sure, there are other
people we know in the fracas, like Thranduil and Bard the bowman, but there’s
not enough to connect with, and it just becomes battle sequences for the sake
of them. (Also, Tauriel is really poorly
served in this movie. If I were
Evangeline Lilly, I’d be offended on behalf of my character.)
Worst
of all, Bilbo is absent for much of it.
There’s a looooong segment in
which he’s not onscreen at all, and
when he finally starts showing up again, it’s mainly just to react to stuff. The movie’s quality automatically increases
whenever Bilbo has something to do – I really enjoy a scene he shares with
Thranduil and Bard in the ramp-up to the battle, and it’s great overall to see
how much he’s grown throughout the films – and devoting so much screentime to
something he doesn’t take much part in makes it that much harder to invest in
the action.
The Hobbit trilogy’s biggest contribution to
Tolkien’s legacy? Any school kid looking
to avoid their education by watching the movie instead of reading the book will
be put off by the fact that slogging through all three films would probably
take longer. Plus, any kid determined
enough to watch in lieu of reading will be instantly found out when their book
report contains stuff about Sauron returning, Radagast the Brown, the existence
of an elf-elf-dwarf love triangle, and any number of invented or shoehorned
bits. Well done, Peter Jackson – you’ve
created a strong deterrent against cheating as well as a surefire way to spot
it. Wouldn’t you rather have created a
good, fun adaptation of The Hobbit
instead?
Warnings
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