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

Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Ian McKellen
December 2014

This review was originally tweeted in Real-time from the back row of a movie theater and appears @BackRoweReviews. Though efforts were made to tease rather than ruin this movie’s memorable lines and moments, some spoilers may exist in the following evaluation. The original tweets appear in black, while follow-up comments appear in red. For concerns over objectionable content, please first refer to one of the many parental movie guide websites. All ratings are based on a four star system. Happy reading!



One last arrow. Make it count.
Both Bard and Legolas run out of arrows in the film. Perhaps this is in response to the negative criticism that characters with longbow skills always seem to have an endless supply of arrows in Jackson’s Middle-earth movies…just like action stars always seem to have an unlimited number of bullets when taking out the bad guys.

A promise stone for the Elven princess.
I guess it’s a Middle-earth version of a promise ring.

The showdown at Dol Guldur is spectacular.
In truth, this is the only action scene in the movie that had any degree of heft or emotional resonance for me. This sequence features a clash of titans…all of the heavy hitters from LOTR are here and the melee, though brief, is a frenetic and catastrophic power struggle that effectively sets the events of LOTR into motion. This confrontation is like a chess match between grand masters, while the rest of the battles in the film resemble that electronic football game where players mindlessly collide with each other or aimlessly meander around the board in fractal patterns. And you’re sure to be shocked at who sends Sauron packing.

Ah, Mithril mail. I’m surprised Thorin was willing to part with it.
After all, Gimli avers that a Mithril shirt is a priceless treasure in LOTR. And, bestowing gifts doesn’t seem to be Thorin’s strong suit, especially when afflicted by the dragon’s madness.

Bilbo absconds with the Arkenstone, but is it in time to avert a war?
You can probably tell from the title that the answer to the question is…negatory.

Were-worms. Wait, don’t these things live on Arrakis not Middle Earth?
The inclusion of these gigantic worms, for the one minute that they’re actually onscreen, is highly gimmicky and utterly superfluous. Isn’t the movie already long enough? This scene should’ve been left on the cutting room floor…with the other, much smaller, worms. Corrections: Middle-earth and wereworms, according to David Day’s bestiary Characters from Tolkien.

Way to use your head, giant troll.
There’s little else going on inside its thick cranium, so might as well use it as a battering ram. Who needs Grond?

Alfred is worthless in a battle. Something tells me he’s going to die horribly.
This guy reminds me of that weasel Beni in The Mummy (1999). Correction: Alfrid.

Thorin sees himself drowning in a whirlpool of liquid gold.
Yes, this is a sign that he’s officially lost it.

Thorin asks his fellow dwarves if they will follow him #OneLastTime.
Props go to the film’s marketing team for establishing this line as a hashtag well in advance of the film’s release.

Legolas finally runs out of arrows. Uh-oh!
Not much of an anxious moment, though, since we know he’s a central character in the future trilogy.

Beautiful landscapes on the “back again” journey.
Although, the trek back is far too short for my liking, and Gandalf’s farewell is a tad reserved when considering all that Bilbo’s done to aid his quest. Thanks for nothing, pointy hat!

Final analysis: a rousing finale to the trilogy and an effective bridge to LOTR.
Thanks to Jackson and his team of writers, watching all six movies, marathon style, will now be a seamless, albeit bleary-eyed, experience.

Rating: 3 out of 4. Sub-LOTR but still a journey worth taking, if only to see how it ends.

Pre-release reviews have criticized this third Hobbit installment as one prolonged battle with a nearly wholesale absence of character moments. It’s hard to argue with that argument. As a trilogy capper, Five Armies doesn’t even come close to approaching the epic grandeur that Best Picture winner The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) so beautifully achieved by diligently excavating its rich source material. Still, to judge Five Armies against ROTK is pretty unfair. This is The Hobbit, after all; the more remedial epoch of the Middle-earth saga. Of course, that qualification just ends up sounding like a colossal capitulation and a pathetic excuse for this uninspired and heartless affair. One of the main contributors to the film’s mediocrity is that it’s the third movie based on one book, unlike LOTR’s 1:1 book-to-movie ratio. It’s evident after viewing this film (which also includes tidbits from Tolkien’s other works as well as Jackson’s own, original story embellishments) that the director stretched the events from the novel as far as he could…many maintain that he shouldn’t have stretched it quite so far. Again, it’s hard to argue with that notion. The preponderance of highly styled, frenetically paced action sequences coupled with an utter dearth of character moments has forged an extremely lopsided experience. By way of defending the film, some would attest that since extensive character development has been established in the first two films, only minor character work was needed here. On this point I strongly disagree since the movie’s action-palooza plot has created a tone deaf entertainment. The only scenes in the film that engaged my emotions were at the very end when Bilbo returns to the Shire. It’s like I’d been watching over two hours of a FPS video game up to that point and only got about ten minutes of actual movie…empty mental calories with only a morsel of actual story. Some will cite Thorin’s treasure trance as a strong plot point, but I contend that it was handled very unskillfully (Bilbo “tells” us, via his conversation with the dwarves, that Thorin is ill instead of “showing” us) and that this whole subplot is far too similar to Smeagol’s descent into corruption and madness—which is far more compelling than Thorin’s. While Tauriel and Legolas’ through lines finally pay off, their sidebar adventures frequently upstage those of the dwarves—the supposed main characters in the story. As far as the fracas with the firedrake is concerned, Smaug’s presence in the film is far too fleeting and feels like an afterthought. Disappointing! There can be no doubt that Five Armies is a first-rate spectacle, but it seems perfunctory at every turn, just filling in the last details from the book while connecting the dots between The Hobbit and LOTR trilogies. I had far higher hopes (somewhere up in the sky with the eagles, which have become the go-to, deus ex machina saviors of our heroes and have been employed far too often in these Middle-earth tales) for this film and especially for the titular battle, which doesn’t hold a candle to Helm’s Deep and isn’t even worth mentioning in the same sentence as the cataclysmic conflagration at Pelennor Field. Bottom line: Five Armies succeeds at passing the baton off to LOTR. Other than that utilitarian role, there’s little else to recommend the film, unless your threshold for enduring protracted action sequences is somewhere up in the stratosphere...which is, incidentally, where you should also suspend your disbelief while watching the film. Some could grouse, justifiably, that the final farewell to this fantasy franchise is less a tribute to the author than it is a Tolkien gesture. Though getting there wasn’t all that I’d hoped it would be, in the end, I’m just glad to be back again.

Tags: Adventure, Fantasy