The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies (PG-13)

Much like Peter Jackson's previous Tolkien trilogy, the final Hobbit film redeems some of the mistakes and missteps of it's plodding middle chapter.  However, unlike closing-trilogy counterpart and Oscar winner Return of the King, Battle of the Five Armies only tries to satisfy the general public's thirst for mindless fantasy action and avoids both critical and fan acclaim.  Unfortunately it also grossed over a Billion at the box office, and sadly that is the only measure of success that the studio heads will really pay attention to.

The loose pace-killing threads from the last film are wrapped up early.  The burning of Lake Town and the extinguishing of Smaug are quickly (and loosely) wrapped up, leaving the rest of the 2 hours on the eponymous Battle of the Five armies.  It is filled with cringe inducing CGI (poor Billy Connolly) over-wrought and misdirected emotions (the evil comedic relief Wormtongue Jr. has a lot to answer for, as does the made-up cliche-yet-still-under-written dwarf/elf romance)  However the thing this Hobbit has to answer for most is the prolonged and yawn inducing, Legolas-stuffed battle scenes.  Thousands of elves who robotically move in sync are not impressive when they are CG models simply using the same animations.

For the sake of argument lets compare two fight scenes from the two trilogies.  Aragorn vs Lurtz from Fellowship and Thorin vs Azog in this one.  In the former, a fantastically paced delightfully violent throw down that takes place in a real wooded glen between two actual actors (one in layers of prosthetic makeup), with desperately thrown weapons and thrown punches, a fight that is as brief as it is realistic with a quick yet satisfying conclusion that ranks as one of cinema's greatest fight scenes.  Peter Jackson shot that, wrote that, thought it out before hand.  Compare that to the video-game-boss level that is Thorin dodging a CG Orc's rock on a chain weapon on top of a frozen waterfall.  The prolonged tedious back and forth, the "surprising" twists and turns, the unsatisfying CGI green screening and whimper of a finish.  Peter Jackson decided to do it this way, to figure it out later in the computer, and is as completely devoid of realism as it is of satisfaction.  While Five Armies does this sort of thing less often than Desolation, it still shows the differences between the two trilogies, and how The Hobbit has amplified those LOTR problems three-fold.  Overabundant use of of CG, ego-fueled changes to Tolkien's children's story that perpetuate even more ridiculous changes, and an apparently flimsy grasp on what made the source material so special.  And just like Fellowship before it, the first Hobbit was derided as boring since it hewed closest to the book and embraced singing and dancing over more action scenes, a bold faced lie about future faithfulness to the source material.

Disappointing that this is the last cinematic glimpse into the epic world of J.R.R;s master life-work.  It has almost no emotional closure beyond "Well That Happened and can't be undone."  Where is the sad longing for more like a the end of King?  Replacing it is the profound feeling of "Thank god they can't screw this up any further."  Of course, with dangling potential ticket sales and the untapped novel The Silmarillion, who knows what middling film Middle Earth could vaguely inspire next.

4.5 Weeping Dwarfs Tearing their own Beards out of 10 (MEDICORE)