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In 2001, director Peter Jackson premiered The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in his widely acclaimed Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now, 13 years later, he brings his Middle-earth adventures to a close with the epic battles and overstuffed storylines of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
The final film in Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy finds Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins and the band of dwarves nearing the end of their mission to reclaim the dwarves’ kingdom and place Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) on the throne. After Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) kills the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), it seems as though Thorin can finally take what’s rightfully his. But as soon as word of Smaug’s death spreads, armies begin converging on the Lonely Mountain, prepared to go to war for the riches it contains.
Jackson has spent a large part of his career exploring Middle-earth—and, from the beginning, he’s brought it all to life in breathtaking detail. It’s no surprise, then, that The Battle of the Five Armies is another gorgeous film, with stunning scenery and imaginary worlds that look remarkably lifelike.
Unfortunately, though, this final film in the Hobbit trilogy suffers from the same glaring issues that its predecessors did. Many of the film’s greatest problems come from Jackson’s decision to take one average-length book and turn it into three extra-long movies. As a result, the films are loaded with characters and storylines that weren’t in the book and add little to the story. The most irritating example in this installment is Alfrid (played by Ryan Gage), a devious resident of Lake-town, whose troublemaking shenanigans distract from the action while taking away some of the story’s credibility.
The rest of the cast, meanwhile, is so large that very few of the characters seem to matter. Freeman is once again pitch-perfect as Bilbo, handling the role with just the right mix of drama and humor. And Sir Ian McKellen gives another memorable performance as Gandalf. But the rest of the characters tend to fade into the background. Most of the dwarves remain little more than faces in the crowd, and the only characters that truly stand out are the ones that are awkwardly overdone—from Thorin, whose power and riches make him crazy, to Lee Pace’s Thranduil, who rides around on an oversized antlered beast.
Of course, the action is nothing short of epic, with massive armies of men and elves and dwarves and orcs coming together to wage war against one another. But when it all comes to an end, there simply isn’t much here to care about.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is another strikingly beautiful adventure through Middle-earth—but it’s so bloated that it’s sure to leave even devoted fans with a bittersweet feeling: happy for the journey, sorry to see it end, and frustrated that it wasn’t better.
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