Skip to main content

You’ve won the mountain. Is that not enough?

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
(2014)

(SPOILERS) Peter Jackson’s second Tolkien trilogy has ignited controversy and disenchantment, much of it vented by those who praised him to the heavens for his work on the first. The Hobbitses aren’t quite the equivalent of George Lucas’ much-maligned Star Wars prequels, but few would deny there is a noticeable step down in quality from The Lord of the Rings. The main bones of contention remain ever-present in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.


There are the invented characters and unnecessary encores for known ones that shouldn’t be there. There’s the over-use of CGI employed to engineer frequently ludicrous action sequences, which are rendered devoid of tension as a result. There’s the expansion of a slim volume to the point where it isn’t quite clear what the picture is about any more. I enjoyed the previous two films (the second more than the first), but it was a stop-start enjoyment, whereby Jackson could be relied on to throw something in the mix at intervals that was tonally glaring or even woefully misconceived. 


While I fully expected this to follow suit, I also had limited expectations for the third instalment based on the retitling; Battle of the Five Armies would be an extended dust-up, one that becomes wearisome through repetition and a lack of places to go with its story. In that respect I was pleasantly surprised. The film is much more balanced than its name suggests (There and Back Again would, admittedly, be a misfit), both in the amount of time it takes to get to the fighting and in engaging the viewer with the different strands of the melee itself.


This is a solid adaptation, one possessed of a familiarity that has long since ceased to invite superlatives. It hangs together much better than one would expect, given that it represents the afterthought of the series; Jackson’s not-at-all-cynical-honestly expansion from two films to three. It’s unvarnished genesis is most evident in the leaner running time (by about 20 minutes) and the dispatching of Smaug in the opening sequence. I’m not sure the latter decision really services any aspect of the story, outside of the home viewing of the trilogy arena, since Smaug is the tale’s biggest character and the most iconic presence. Having built up the dragon’s threat effectively, Jackson managed to dissipate the tension and break the rhythm by ending The Desolation of Smaug on a cliffhanger. The sequence itself is effectively staged, but it would be more so as one unit. 


Luke Evans, who has not always been well served in his film roles, makes a strong showing as Bard throughout; he’s a more accessible leader than the impossibly noble Aragorn. The only trouble is that as he assumes the mantle of leader so his screen time diminishes to make way for more dwarfish matters. He also gets a typically dumb Jackson rescue sequence atop a runaway cart (Bard’s sufferance of not-so-comic-relief weasel Aldrid – Ryan Gage – also serves to undermine him slightly.  


Better served in the humour stakes is Stephen Fry’s Master of Laketown; at least, I liked his line where he regrets not saving more people because “they’re just not worth it”.) During the course of the battle itself, we get to see Billy Connolly riding a pig (the CGI mounts in these films have become no better realised in 10 years) and a skydiving bear. The comedy in Jackson’s post-splatter films has always been variable (I don’t think the Beorn is supposed to be funny) and more often that not he misses his marks. Sylvester McCoy, who was surprisingly okay in An Unexpected Journey, is onscreen for about two minutes.


As I say, I’d expected the battle to be a stodgy and overstuffed pudding. Yet Jackson takes well-judged time getting there (although many would say he takes far too much time and liberty getting everywhere in these three films). The release of Gandalf occurs with perfunctory ease, and there is something of a greatest hits package about the arrival of Galadriel (including dark Galadriel revealing her monochrome fury), Saruman, and Elrond, fighting the Nazgul and eliciting a Sauron cameo. At times, the Lucas trap is set for all too see in The Battle of the Five Armies, not only in the over-reliance on CGI where once there was physicality and weight, but also – in scenes such as this – taking unnecessary pains to interlink and reference what is yet to come. I enjoyed the sequence, but Christopher Lee all but winks at the camera when Saruman say he’ll go and deal with this (his super-acrobatic fighting skills are a definite improvement on his Dooku moves).


So too, Lee Pace’s Thranduil when he suggests Legolas seeks out Strider. Who may be some sort of super-special kind of fellow but Thranduil’s not telling quite how. Jackson is over-egging the pudding, just as the effect of bookending the adaptation with Ian Holm denies the story an identity in its own right. The Hobbit will forever exist in reference and deference to The Lord of the Rings, which may not impinge on the latter, but it is definitely deleterious to the former.


Orlando Bloom’s presence in this trilogy is easily the most glaring and egregious. No one was demanding he return, apart from Bloom and his agent, and Legolas’ waxy-fake rejuvenation fails to convince at any given moment. Worse, the already artless CGI acrobatics of his original appearances are now augmented beyond any rhyme or reason. Does Jackson think it’s cool to have the irksome Elf hitch a ride on a bat? Or is he, perversely, clutching the cheesy fakery to his prodigious bosom, just as he did when Legolas slid down a oliphaunt’s trunk in The Return of the King? 


At least the fight with Bolg has some mano a mano energy, although it too falls prey to busyness and pixelated video-game defiance of feasibility (leaping up falling rocks). What bothers most about the whacky CGI Jackson frequently indulges in The Hobbits is that it destroys the illusion, collapses any suspension of disbelief. Middle Earth is no longer an encompassing, immersive world.


The Elvish are also where my other big beef with Battle of the Five Armies arises. I don’t have a problem changes to the source material as long as it doesn’t adversely affect the wholer picture. Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel was fine in the previous pictures, partly because Lilly was a strong and commanding presence, easily eclipsing Bloom, and partly because she was used reasonably well. That is, up until the point Jackson decided to intimate the love that dare not speak its name between a dwarf and an elf. 


Obviously, it had to be a photogenic dwarf (Aidan Turner’s Kili) and not a fugly one with a prodigious proboscis (Tauriel’s romance with the fat ginger one Bombur really would have been ground-breaking). Star-crossed besottedness becomes Tauriel’s defining characteristic this time out, and it leaves her ineffectual and hopeless. Their passions have been inflamed after about five minutes together, but neither the actors nor Jackson is able to sell this.  It’s particularly laughable that Thranduil, having read her the riot act, should be persuaded her feelings are in fact genuine and pure. Most damningly, Tauriel also becomes another moon-eyed damsel in distress who needs Legolas to do the man’s work for her.


Other elements work as well as you would hope, though. If Thorin’s dragon sickness echoes and previews Boromir’s, then it feels appropriately so. Richard Armitage musters a compelling portrait of a noble character brought low by greed; it’s the kind of substantial motivation The Hobbits have lacked through being (naturally) slight and slender pieces stretched beyond their means. It also works as an effective twist in a third film, as Thorin has been marked as effectively the classical hero of the trilogy. His face-off with Azog finds Jackson on strong form, and includes a superior sequence as the Orc floats beneath a sheet of ice.


The battle is well staged for the most part, and all-the-more effective for the detours into one-on-ones with Azog and Bolg. While there’s a nod to the novel’s Bilbo being out cold for the duration of the conflict, Jackson wisely makes better use of him, providing a sequence with the ring and so ensuring we keep in our minds how much influence it has on him. Without it, the malign hold would seem more casual than cumulative. 


Nevertheless, Bilbo really is incidental here, and I have to admit that, as dependable as Freeman is, he doesn’t take on the dimensions or presence of Elijah Wood or Ian Holm’s eminent hobbits; this might be because I see past roles too clearly in his performance. As familiarity goes, Ian McKellen Gandalf’s parting lines to Bilbo, verging on admonishment, are up there with his best, but otherwise the wizard is an entirely familiar part of the furniture; a piece placed in the corner of the room with a few coats piled on it.


Jackson doesn’t include about 10 different endings here (there are three), so I expect the extended addition will include a few items that need acknowledgement (Bilbo’s share of the treasure, the fate of the Arkenstone). I’m not expecting great things, but I’m curious to view the extended versions back-to-back; perhaps they will prove greater than the sum of their parts. With the exception of The Fellowship of the Ring, I didn’t find the original trilogy entirely satisfying until it landed in longer form.


I also suspect time will be kinder to The Hobbit than it has been to the Star Wars prequels. Brickbats were out for both, but, while the disappointment with Jackson’s tonal liberties and visual incontinence are understandable, there are still many things here he gets right, and much to enjoy throughout. They won’t ever be seen as classics like The Lord of the Rings – they lack the sweeping scale, the emotional journey, and the clear sense of identity, apart from anything else – but they will probably become accepted as likeable if slightly over-nourished relatives. Which should see them through until the next versions are made in another 30 or 40 years.


Labels:

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus
Post a comment
Read more

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.
Post a comment
Read more

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m
Post a comment
Read more

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.
Post a comment
Read more

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.
Post a comment
Read more

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.
Post a comment
Read more

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.
Post a comment
Read more

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.
Post a comment
Read more

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).
Post a comment
Read more

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.
Post a comment
Read more