The Hobbit – The Battle Of The Five Armies
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage
144 mins; Class 12;
KRS Releasing Ltd
The release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies brings to a close an epic and unexpected journey for director Peter Jackson, who possibly never imagined all those years ago that his audacious adaptations of J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle-Earth based literary saga The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) would become such gargantuan critical and commercial hits.
Jackson would have been content to leave it at that, one would suspect. And his involvement with The Hobbit, Tolkien’s prequel to LOTR, was originally that of executive producer and screenwriter together with Walsh, Philippa Boyens (who also co-scripted the LOTR trilogy) and putative director Guillermo del Toro.
Production delays led to del Toro leaving the project, with Jackson the obvious choice to replace him.
When it was announced that The Hobbit would, like its big screen predecessor, be a trilogy, many eyebrows were raised, however, the naysayers did not consider that Jackson had dedicated many years of his life to create a flawless cinematic saga and there was no way he was going to ruin it.
And he certainly hasn’t. All three films in The Hobbit series boast all the hallmarks the director and his superb team stamped on the LOTR trilogy.
Richly-drawn characters bring to life an astonishing fantasy
Richly-drawn characters, a sizeable ensemble cast ; breath-taking visuals, bringing to life an astonishing fantasy world with remarkable attention to detail in its costume and production design; and moments of introspective and intimate character-building, meshed with scenes of mind-blowing action courtesy of the effects created by Weta Digital. Nothing has changed here.
The biggest obstacles faced by The Hobbit trilogy were the inevitable comparisons to LOTR, which was always more epic in scope and narrative. The Hobbit has a more linear story and, in stretching out the saga over three films, Jackson definitely needed to pad things out.
He did so by mining the appendices to The Return of the King. But still, I feel Jackson had to rely on unrelenting action in Parts 1 and 2, with both taking their time to let the story unfold. So how does Part 3 hold up?
Things certainly start with a bang and Jackson hits the ground running, opening the film pretty much where we left off after Desolation, with the dragon Smaug (voiced with unbridled fury by Benedict Cumberbatch) wreaking death and destruction on Lake-town village.
No time is wasted on character exposition – it is not needed. Although Freeman’s Bilbo seems to have less to do here, he is once more the heart and soul of the movie, his little person effortlessly displaying bravery and wisdom throughout.
The film belongs this time to Richard Armitage, who gets the biggest character arc, eliciting equal amounts fear and sympathy as the noble but troubled Thorin. Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, as is his wont, turns up at the right moments. Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel and Luke Evans’ Bard get some solid action, with Cate Blanchett adding gravitas in her brief but effective appearance as Galadriel.
It is almost redundant to say that all these years in, the characters are familiar and dear to us; we root for them to succeed.
However, I had always pinned my hopes on The Battle of the Five Armies bringing the trilogy – and ultimately the saga as a whole - to a resounding end, yet it lacks that extra touch of je ne sais quoi that would finally elicit five stars.