The Battle of the Five... no, Six... no, Seven... no, Eight Armies!
The Battle of the Five Armies is the last installment of Peter Jackson's attempt to take a much-loved 300-page children's book about friendship, loyalty and self-discovery, and turn it into a 9-hour 12A-rated film trilogy about doom-laden foreshadowing, world conquest and epic battles.
I didn't have much enthusiasm after the gobsmacking awfulness of the second part, so I went in with rock-bottom expectations. And I found that... actually, it's not all that bad. It's certainly the best of the three.
It helps that it's also the shortest of the three, weighing in at less than two and a half hours (for a change). The gloomy foreshadowing is cut down to a minimum and the focus is on action set-pieces. Cliff-hanger resolved and dragon slain within the first ten minutes? Check. Gandalf rescued in the next ten? Check. Skirmish after skirmish after skirmish? Check.
Unfortunately the succession of set-pieces does make it feel like watching a video game at times. The dodgy CGI doesn't help matters, but the main problem is fight scenes in which you feel no particular emotional investment in the combatants, no sense of bravery or danger or anything like that. Instead the direction is all, "Hey, look at this cool (and preposterous) move this person's doing!" There's also an awful lot of silliness undermining what drama there is in the fights - Smaug's death being a particularly ridiculous case in point. And sandworms. Yes, sandworms. But I can forgive silliness when it delivers Billy Connolly as Dain, riding into battle on a pig and using the "Glasgow kiss" as his preferred fighting style.
The titular battle was ripe for expansion from Tolkien's work, and it does manage to rattle along at a reasonable pace which feels refreshing after the first two plodding films. Peter Jackson seems to have learned a lesson and, this time around, there are actually fewer endings than in the book. You could probably still chop the best part of an hour out and not miss it though.
In terms of faithfulness to the book more generally, this is a much better job than I was expecting. All the important story beats are there, including several key scenes and dialogue. Thorin's story arc is particularly well done, and Martin Freeman continues to be an excellent Bilbo. All the characters act as they should and their stories are faithfully told. The deviations from the book are mostly unobjectionable (if redundant) sub-plots rather than major changes for the worst. The tone still feels wrong for The Hobbit, but less so than in the first two films. I missed the talking ravens and the songs though.
The farewells and Bilbo's return to the Shire are spot on, which left me feeling vaguely generous towards the film. Yes, I realise I'm damning with faint praise, but after The Desolation of Smaug it's a miracle I'm even doing that. The Battle of the Five Armies is a pretty reasonable way of rounding off this trilogy. If you enjoyed the first two, you'll enjoy this as well. For me, the whole trilogy just seems badly misjudged. All I wanted was a film version of The Hobbit. Was that so much to ask for?
I didn't have much enthusiasm after the gobsmacking awfulness of the second part, so I went in with rock-bottom expectations. And I found that... actually, it's not all that bad. It's certainly the best of the three.
It helps that it's also the shortest of the three, weighing in at less than two and a half hours (for a change). The gloomy foreshadowing is cut down to a minimum and the focus is on action set-pieces. Cliff-hanger resolved and dragon slain within the first ten minutes? Check. Gandalf rescued in the next ten? Check. Skirmish after skirmish after skirmish? Check.
Unfortunately the succession of set-pieces does make it feel like watching a video game at times. The dodgy CGI doesn't help matters, but the main problem is fight scenes in which you feel no particular emotional investment in the combatants, no sense of bravery or danger or anything like that. Instead the direction is all, "Hey, look at this cool (and preposterous) move this person's doing!" There's also an awful lot of silliness undermining what drama there is in the fights - Smaug's death being a particularly ridiculous case in point. And sandworms. Yes, sandworms. But I can forgive silliness when it delivers Billy Connolly as Dain, riding into battle on a pig and using the "Glasgow kiss" as his preferred fighting style.
The titular battle was ripe for expansion from Tolkien's work, and it does manage to rattle along at a reasonable pace which feels refreshing after the first two plodding films. Peter Jackson seems to have learned a lesson and, this time around, there are actually fewer endings than in the book. You could probably still chop the best part of an hour out and not miss it though.
In terms of faithfulness to the book more generally, this is a much better job than I was expecting. All the important story beats are there, including several key scenes and dialogue. Thorin's story arc is particularly well done, and Martin Freeman continues to be an excellent Bilbo. All the characters act as they should and their stories are faithfully told. The deviations from the book are mostly unobjectionable (if redundant) sub-plots rather than major changes for the worst. The tone still feels wrong for The Hobbit, but less so than in the first two films. I missed the talking ravens and the songs though.
The farewells and Bilbo's return to the Shire are spot on, which left me feeling vaguely generous towards the film. Yes, I realise I'm damning with faint praise, but after The Desolation of Smaug it's a miracle I'm even doing that. The Battle of the Five Armies is a pretty reasonable way of rounding off this trilogy. If you enjoyed the first two, you'll enjoy this as well. For me, the whole trilogy just seems badly misjudged. All I wanted was a film version of The Hobbit. Was that so much to ask for?