Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

It is very difficult to stay impartial to a movie when you’ve spent half your life loving the source material, so let me be the first to admit that I watched the entire Hobbit trilogy through rose-coloured glasses. Being smitten with all things Tolkien, my personal bias demands that the integrity of the author’s message and themes remain pure and untainted by the Hollywood machine. Unfortunately The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies fell into the sort of traps that pulled my heart away from Middle Earth and stomped on it instead. Granted, nothing could keep me from any of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations, just like nothing will stop me from seeing this movie again; but for all the things that make it magical, it also suffers from the same problem that plague many blockbusters.

Peter Jackson is a true fan; there can be no doubt about that, just as there can be no doubt about his love for Tolkien’s writings. The entire cinematic Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies feel like love letters to Tolkien. Jackson captures the central themes of The Hobbit easily. There is a recurring focus on the danger if greed, and the ugliness of power. And while these themes are important, in fact they are central to the book, the movie handles them in a very heavy-handed fashion. Characters who fall prey to the lure of gold are shown as either unsavoury or emotionally unstable. Like greed, one of Tolkien’s reoccurring themes is the corruption that comes with power; like those who suffer from greed, those who seek power in The Hobbit abuse it. I have a lot of respect for Jackson’s treatment of the themes, he also explores the comradery that comes from war and the idea that after war, a soldier’s world is changed and he can never return to home as it was. That being said, the entire Hobbit trilogy uses secondary two dimensional characters to emphasize these points. It is an annoying storytelling technique that made me feel pandered to. I did not need the constant reminder that the Master’s (Stephen Fry) love of gold and his cowardice made him despicable, just as I did not need the jarring cuts from scene to scene contrasting his behavior with Bard’s (Luke Evans) noble heroics. The Hobbit needed to show more faith in its audience; people are smart enough to understand a message when it’s given with subtlety.

In terms of the film making, there can be no doubt that The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies looks beautiful. Although it is presented in 3D, it does not fall prey to the gimmicks of 3D filmmaking; things do not swoop out of the screen, nor do they need to. Each shot is carefully planned and shot to contribute visually to the world building. The tone of the Hobbit trilogy mirrors the progression in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the movies grow progressively darker. It felt like the studio wanted to recreate the success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and so stuck to a similar formula. Many facets of The Battle of Five Armies felt as though the studio had intervened and made changes. For example, fans were furious about the addition of the character Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). I welcomed her appearance in The Desolation of Smaug, Tolkien wrote few female characters and the appearance of Tauriel gives young women someone they can look to. Unfortunately, Tauriel becomes the center of a love triangle that is completely unnecessary to the plot of the trilogy. It does not add to the central themes, nor does it farther develop any of the characters. This romantic story line doesn’t feel natural to the story, it feels forced and inorganic. It is also problematic because the once strong Tauriel loses her agency once her fate becomes intertwined with the two love interests. The movie slightly redeems itself through the power of Galadriel (Cate Blanchet) and when the women of Laketown decide to stand with the men in battle, but it is still difficult to swallow that Tauriel allows herself to be reduced to a pining, love-struck woman whose actions are dictated by her emotions.

Despite problems with pacing, and heavy handed messages, there were redeeming elements in The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo Baggins is fully flushed out and he is charmingly awkward. The best moments in the movie were when he sat silently and emoted through his expressions. There is also the joy I feel during every one of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations when I get to watch the elves fight; in fact I would gladly pay to watch a movie that was essentially a three-hour fight sequence between elves and orcs. As always, the costumes and sets were beautifully designed and a joy to watch and fully drew me into Middle Earth. But as someone who dearly loves The Hobbit, I cannot honestly say that this trilogy lived up to my expectations, and unfortunately The Battle of Five Armies was a poor finale. If you have invested time and energy in the other two, you most certainly must see this one, but if you are looking for that mythical brilliant adaptation of your favourite novel, The Hobbit I am sorry to say that we have to keep waiting.