(I promise more posts in 2015! I really do.)
By now we know that PJ's Hobbit
movies are not so much Tolkien as Tolkien-derived. This isn't
necessarily a bad thing, but you have to shape your expectations
accordingly.
Scattered notes on seeing The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies:
First and most, Martin Freeman remains forever terrific as Bilbo. There isn't enough of him in TH:TBot5A, but he's the best thing here. (Smaug of course barely gets any screen time at all, but he steals every second. Cumberbatch has got the voice.)
(Also, I have spent a significant portion of my life imagining what a dragon would look like attacking a highly flammable late-medieval village, and the PJCGI gets that much pretty much perfect. Whatever other complaints we might have, there's a huge amount of visual feast in these movies.)
A huge chunk of the movie is pure over-extended battle sequence, like a much longer version of the Pelennor Fields in ROTK.
It's impressive and exciting, but despite all the clashing and
smashing the stakes are much, much lower. Orcs are orcs, but this isn't
a fight for the soul of Middle-earth; it's like some WW1
Austrian-Russian engagement that no one remembers anymore.
PJ
has finally, belatedly toned down his tendency towards ridiculous elaboration.
There's nothing in this movie that's truly embarrassing to watch--no
fart jokes, no snot jokes, no Goblin Town roller coaster, no dragon bath
in molten gold. If you somehow removed the battle sequences, this
installment would feel restrained, even a little dignified. The rabbit
sled is there, but only incidentally.
The Tauriel/Kili relationship figures importantly, but it isn't overblown. Thankfully there's no Goldilocks bedroom scene (if you know what I mean). I still like Thranduil, especially when he just-doesn't-give-a-shit-about-your-Dark-Lord. Thranduil continues to make immortal boredom look sexy as hell.
Time, however, is not kind to Orlando Bloom. Everyone looks noticeably older now, actually. It is long flight to New Zealand, I suppose, but the added texture is slightly disconcerting in a prequel, and will be only more so on Blu-ray.
Thorin's
arc is nicely done. His gold hoard greed ("dragon sickness") is
convincing, and it merely echoes the power of the Ring without being
tied to it directly. Speaking of that Ring, I was worried that
the foreshadowing would be laid on way too thick, but thankfully it's
fairly subtle. The denouement of the return to the Shire is short and
nicely focused on Bilbo. There's no unwelcome announcement that Only
Frodo Matters Now.
Bad reviews prepared me for something worse
than this movie. (Perchance those reviews were taking PJ to task
for the excesses of the first films and for the bloat inherent in a
trilogy.) This third installment isn't perfect, and it still isn't The Hobbit, but there's nothing here I hated like I hated the worst parts of the first two. It's a solid and enjoyable finish to what was started.
It needs to be remembered that Jackson really is good when he faithfully
brings memorable Tolkien moments to life: the arrival of the dwarves at
Bilbo's house, the butterflies in the treetops, the Riddles in the
Dark, the interview with Smaug, the parlay at the gate. It's when he decides to add his own
brand of farce or action that everything falls embarrassingly apart.
This must be said, though: In
the end, all three movies still feel like a huge and inappropriate
overdose of violence. This matters more than any of the broad indulgences and failures of tone. Tolkien's books have plenty of desperate struggle
and some very significant battles, but he seldom describes and never
dwells on violence itself. For Tolkien, violence is a symptom of moral
failure. He never relishes it, and he could never love it the way these
movies obviously and unfortunately do.
