The adventure is finally over. Thirteen years since the formation of the Fellowship, Middle Earth has, at last, closed for business. The only thing it needed to do was to end well, to leave us with a satisfying taste – and to justify its split into three lengthy motion pictures.
Unfortunately, it does none of these things. This third entry in “The Hobbit” trilogy strangles on its own narrative cord – and offers conclusive proof that Tolkien’s 365-page source material did not need to be made into three films.
What is most disappointing is that “The Battle of the Five Armies” lacks familiarity. With “An Unexpected Journey”, there were parallels with “The Fellowship of the Ring”. With “The Desolation of Smaug”, there was a strong sense of something enormous coming, as it was in “The Two Towers”. With this film, the structure is so all over the place, with so many different story strands, that it becomes slightly tedious viewing. This doesn’t feel like the Middle Earth movies we know; it feels like an excuse for extensive CGI and for one, final (somewhat irrelevant) battle scene.
The dragon, Smaug (voiced magnificently by Benedict Cumberbatch), the focal point of “The Hobbit” story, is dispatched in the opening portion of the film, which, as it turns out, is the best part of it. After this, too much time is devoted to the coming of a 45-minute battle, which, in the end, has no winner and no purpose, mainly because the film-makers have changed the original story so much that they have forced themselves into an inescapable plot corner.
“The Battle of the Five Armies” has one core problem: it is simply not important enough to warrant its own existence. Where the war in “The Lord of the Rings” had repercussions for all in the vast world of Middle Earth, this battle for gold and silver by a mountain near a small town is quite an underwhelming spectacle.
Of course, this was acceptable in the book, as the titular battle was an after-thought to the Smaug saga, a way to resolve the differences between the dwarves, the elves and others who sought to take some of the riches buried in the Lonely Mountain, but there is simply not enough material in that part of book to legitimise a two-and-a-half hour film.
What’s more, the film-makers attempts to rectify both the lack of familiarity and importance in this film are forced and extremely off-putting. In trying to make it relevant, they have stretched the whole story far too thin – and, by the end, there is very little left to savour.
In its defence, the battle does, as expected, look fantastic and some of the individual scenes feel spectacular (for instance, the final showdown between Thorin and Azog). The key performances are, again, dependably excellent, but they are not enough to save the film from its certain position as the least-satisfying entry in this long-running tale.
This battle was lost. Thankfully, the war was won long ago.
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