Spotlight #16 - the Hobbit: the Battle of the Five Armies

By the time you read this, the third installment of "the Hobbit" trilogy would have been in theaters for more than a month and grossed about $250 million worldwide, so I may have been one of the last few people to see it in IMAX 3D. I went in with high hopes- this is the last movie for "the Hobbit" and quite possibly the last Middle-Earth movie we ever will get. Of course, the overall lower quality of the franchise compared to "the Lord of the Rings" left me not quite knowing what to expect. What I ended up getting was definitely something worth the twenty-dollar ticket. Sure, it may be full of a few things that helped bog down "an Unexpected Journey", but it still is an honorable send-off to such a monumental franchise.
This film has the duty of tackling the last fifty pages of the novel in a hair less than three hours. Smaug's raid of Laketown and Bard's consequential take-down of said dragon is given before the opening titles. As much as Smaug will be missed, the dwarves now believe they have the mountain for themselves, as well as all of the treasure inside it. Of course, it isn't long before the politics settle in. The men of Laketown believe they were cheated with their village now decimated, and the Wood-Elves want to recollect some of what they paid the mountain in days of yore: both are willing to fight for it. Little do any of them know, though, that a joint force of orcs and goblins is on the march, hoping to use the mountain for their own, more nefarious purposes.
As you may or may not expect, this battle- which only took up a handful of pages in the text- clocks in at about half the film's runtime. Some people may not appreciate how this throws off the pacing of the story in general, but it does lead to some pretty amazing moments for different characters. For instance, several early scenes focus on Thorin's descent into madness as he's overwhelmed by his new treasure horde, many of which are used very effectively to help break up an otherwise drawn-out battle sequence. As expected, Martin Freeman still plays the role of Bilbo to a perfect T, and almost everyone can appreciate Gandalf's conclusion to the Necromancer/Sauron sub-plot. It's all enough to show that Peter Jackson's direction on the quieter moments can be both consistently good and well-written enough to keep those inclined interested.
Of course, that's not to say that the battle itself is without merit. Many people were warning me about the complete CGI overdose and how it distracted from the immersion of the situation. In the middle of it, though, I just had to sit back and marvel at how it all worked. Just about every character in the final battle was a technical breakthrough in some way or another, if not on the same level as Smaug was. The action itself was intense, fun, and, at times, even creative. Sure, some aspects seemed like a stretch, (Earth-eaters?) but the sheer scale of it all alone is worth the buy.
As you may have guessed, this didn't make my Top-7 of 2014 list for a few reasons. As I mentioned earlier, the action is very drawn-out, and didn't really need to take three hours to convey. It also didn't really seem to end on the same level it began at. It almost fades into the falling action, and it still leaves a few sub-plots without a strong resolution that won't be elaborated on in "the Lord of the Rings." For instance, the Kili/ Tauriel/ Legolas triangle they had never really reached any sort of creative outcome. It almost feels like an inverse "Unexpected Journey", whereas that film was too slow and felt like an extended edition, this felt like it went too fast and almost necessitated it.
There are issues that come out of spreading a section smaller than 100 pages and turning it into a movie, as many a film in the past can attest to. This, while still maintaining some of those issues, is still something very enjoyable. Some aspects of the plot may not have worked out entirely, but we still have some great action and a few very striking character moments. For hardcore Tolkein fans, the ending may hit you right where it hurts- or, rather, right where it should have. While low on the Middle-Earth saga's meter, it still sets itself high above many other adventure films from this year, and I would immediately recommend every "Lord of the Rings" collector, when the time comes" to go out to the video store, look for it on Blu-Ray, and...

While trying to maintain a professional standard, I still can't believe that Peter Jackson's universe is all but over!

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