WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Well, I reviewed the first two films, so I
feel that if I didn’t review the third one this rather Vesuviusesque blog
(dormant with occasional violent bursts of energy, albeit perhaps not quite as
magnificent as that fine volcano, which I have visited - indeed once in my
heady and foolish youth I tried to set off the earthquake/volcano monitoring
machine that they have there by jumping up and down next to it) would look even
more patchy and incomplete than it does already. Besides, having come this far,
it is only right to see things through to journey’s end, like Bilbo did, and
let all four of my regular readers know what I thought of The Hobbit: The
Battle of the Five Armies.
In short, it does what it says on the tin.
Anyone expecting a radical and revolutionary departure from the tone and style
of the five previous Peter Jackson Middle Earth films will find themselves
disappointed (and rightly so, as they would be idiots). It is safe to say that
Peter Jackson did not see the one line description of the aforementioned battle
in the book and say “righty-ho, I’ll just skate over that one then”.
No, this is a film about a battle, and the
battle takes up most of the second half of this film, although as Jackson
finally managed to work out where the editing room was and achieve what many
thought him no longer capable of, namely making a film that was less than two
and a half hours long, it actually does not feel as interminable as one might
initially think. There should, however, have been a notice before the start of
the film saying “Warning: Contains large doses of Orlando Bloom gratuitously
prancing around like a prat and whipping out a series of increasingly
preposterous fighting moves”.
I appreciate that this is a fantasy film,
but the “preposterous” factor really has been turned up to 11 throughout this
trilogy. Whilst I would not describe LOTR as “grounded” exactly, whilst
watching those films you did not find yourself constantly looking up at the
screen and thinking “OK, that was just ridiculous” in the way I found myself
constantly doing for much of the Hobbit trilogy. Someone really needed to rein
in Jackson’s love of CGI and crazy stunts, but alas the great man was let loose
to throw generous dollops of both at his increasingly bemused audience.
That said, whilst I agree with the general
consensus that LOTR was the superior trilogy, these films are not entirely
lacking in heart, and whilst some of the lesser characters are given short
shrift (in this film even more than the previous two – less than half of the
dwarves even have lines this time round, and poor old Bombur managed to get
through the whole trilogy without opening his mouth except to breathe or eat
cheese!) the three lead performances are spot on.
It goes without saying that Ian McKellen as
Gandalf the Grey is as warm and reassuring a presence as ever and his chemistry
and rapport with Martin Freeman here will make the scenes he has with Ian Holm
as the older Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring even more pleasurable on repeat
viewings. Freeman, who with his delightfully varied performances in this
trilogy, Sherlock, and Fargo has finally shaken off the spectre of “Tim from
the Office” which I once feared would be with him for life, not only gives a
delightfully nuanced and humorous performance as Bilbo (knocking Elijah Wood’s
Frodo into the proverbial cocked hat) but is wonderful at bringing out the best
in other people’s performances as well, especially the film’s third lead, who
gets the most fleshed out character arc of all and is arguably both this film’s
central protagonist and, for the first half at least, its principal antagonist,
namely Richard Armitage as Thorin.
Speaking as someone who was initially
rather surprised to see this strapping, handsome, six foot two, fortyish Sean
Bean-alike cast as Tolkien’s gnarled and stubborn old dwarf king, I must admit
that Armitage’s performance has completely won me over, even though I maintain
that they could have made more of an effort to make him look like a dwarf, and
part of me is still aching to see what Guillermo Del Toro’s alleged first
choice Brian Blessed would have made of the role (ultimately I suspect that
this choice would have been vetoed anyway, as the scenery here is rather too
expensive for the producers to let an elderly bearded ham loose to chew on it
with reckless abandon, as Blessed undoubtedly would have done).
Armitage is actually in my view more
sympathetic here, as the dragon sickness goes to work on Thorin’s increasingly
paranoid and unstable mind, than he was in the first two films, where he seemed
rather unnecessarily churlish and truculent (true, this was also true of his
literary counterpart, but film Thorin is clearly considerably more intelligent
than book Thorin, so one feels that he should really have known better).
Still, the grumpy dwarf comes good in the
end and joins the fray on the side of the goodies, only to meet his maker
shortly after FINALLY dispatching the trilogy’s entirely unnecessary “bonus
villain”, Azog the Defiler, presumably the Orc equivalent of Jaws from the Bond
films due to his persistent refusal to die when he is supposed to, but who
finally bites the dust in an epic battle on a lake of ice (which was great,
even though as a connisseur of “fights on ice lakes” I personally prefer the
more bumbling approach which was taken by Richard Lester in the Four
Musketeers). I am pleased to report that due to the brilliant performances of
Armitage and Freeman, Thorin’s death hits you just as hard as Boromir’s did in
LOTR.
As for the rest of the battle, well, it is
certainly suitably grand and epic, even if it is all a bit too CGI for some,
and there is an element of “Anchorman 2 with Orcs” due to the sheer number of
characters who suddenly pop out of nowhere to proclaim variations on the
“No-one starts this fight without me” theme. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lake
Towners, More Orcs, Eagles, Radagast, Beorn, Even More Orcs, Billy Connolly,
Billy Connolly’s Giant Pig, and, rather randomly, some weird burrowing worm
creatures that appear to have been borrowed from Dune, all of them get a look
in, albeit only briefly in some cases (having bemoaned Beorn’s limited screen
time in Desolation of Smaug, I am sorry to report that it is even worse here –
he actually gets almost as little screen time as I did as a film extra when I
appeared as Charlie Weasley in Harry Potter 3. Having said that, he does at
least utilize his six seconds on screen to maximum dramatic effect by turning
into a bear and getting stuck into some serious orc slaying, whereas all I got
to do was stand around in a fez looking like a bit of a tit, so on balance I
think he still wins!)
As for Billy Connolly (as Thorin’s even
more cantankerous cousin, Dain Ironfoot, aka The Wee Yin), I think it would be
more accurate to say that what we are really seeing is Billy Connolly playing
Billy Connolly playing Dain, in what appears to be a rather belated audition
for Braveheart. That said, it was not even the real Billy, as he appears to
have been entirely replaced by, yes, more CGI, for reasons which are not
entirely clear to me. I know he’s not in the best of health, but replacing live
actors with CGI imagery has up to now generally been used only to finish off
scenes where the actor has died in the middle of shooting, like Oliver Reed in
Gladiator or Philip Seymour Hoffman in the Hunger Games 3. If they are going to
start using it where the actor is just looking a bit rough round the edges, I
fear we will soon be sliding down a proverbial slippery slope (the worst kind of
slippery slope there is - apologies for the number of proverbs/clichés in this
review btw, but I didn’t get much sleep last night!)
Having said that, Connolly does at least
add a bit of light relief to the proceedings, even if the swearing seemed a bit
out of place (Billy has it written into all his contracts that he has to swear
at least three times in every film he is cast in, which is why the screenplay to Muppet Treasure Island was famously rewritten by Quentin Tarantino). Here
his expletives are fairly mild - he limits himself to a “sod”, a “bugger” and a
“bastard” (which was coincidentally also the title of Billy’s version of The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), but I suspect that JRR Tolkien would still
have disapproved.
The film’s other “comic relief” is a
distinctly less welcome presence. Apparently some bright spark came up with the
idea that the real reason that the crowds came flocking to see Desolation of
Smaug was not the Elves, Hobbits and Dragons and things – no, they were really
there to see the scenes with Ryan Gage as Alfrid, Stephen Fry’s sniveling
weasel of a sidekick with the bad teeth.
This supremely annoying character had
“Dragon’s lunch” written all over him in the last film, which is why I was so
surprised to see that, unlike the congenial QI host, he not only survived
Smaug’s attack but proceeded to hang around for the entire film like a bad
smell that won’t go away, mugging away and even resorting to cross dressing in
his persistent but futile attempts to generate a laugh from the audience and
hogging what seemed like endless hours of screen time that could have been much
better spent on poor ignored Beorn or other characters who actually APPEAR IN
THE BOOK.
It’s not really Gage’s fault, he is a fine
actor who is doing the best with weak material, but being stuck with a
character who is essentially the bastard offspring of Grima Wormtongue and Jar
Jar Binks does not help him to make a good impression. Whoever had the genius
idea of ramping up this one note little rodent’s screen time so that he’s practically in the Hobbit more than the bleeding Hobbit himself, should be
served to Smaug at the earliest opportunity.
The revolting little rat is even rude to
Gandalf at one point, and (bearing in mind that Mr Connolly has already opened
the Middle Earth Swear Box) I suspect that the grey wizard would have got an
almighty cheer from the audience if he’d just turned around and retorted
“Alfrid, you’re not funny and you’re not in the book, so why don’t you just
f**k off?”
That really takes care of most of the
negatives, although I also thought that the elf-dwarf romance thing between
Kili and Tauriel was a bit on the heavy-handed side this time, and in fact the
screenplay is pretty uneven throughout. Lines like “Those bats were bred for
only one purpose!” “What?” “WAR!” would have sounded pretty ridiculous even if
Orlando Bloom had not delivered it in such a wooden and awkward way. Having
said that, Jackson’s team does have one genuinely excellent screenwriter in
their ranks, namely one JRR Tolkien, and Jackson certainly knows how to milk
those lines which were lifted verbatim (or almost verbatim) from the book for
maximum dramatic impact (Thorin’s last lines and Gandalf’s last words to the
young Bilbo, in particular).
Other bits I liked were:
-
the brief but energetic scenes with
Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman taking on the Nazgul (if you are harbouring any
doubts that the 92 year old Christopher Lee is in fact a real vampire, just
watch him pull out his finest kung fu moves in this film, although I am willing
to admit that he might have had just a tiny, tiny bit of help from stunt
doubles and the ever present CGI team!);
-
the opening sequence, with a brief but
delicious return from Benedict Cumberdragon, who gets a chance to incinerate
some peasants and throw out a few more malevolent one liners before getting
himself killed, really rather easily given all the build up, at the hand of
Bard the Moustachioed Welshman, who loses his bow and so has to slay the dragon
using his own son’s shoulder to fix his aim (did I mention that elements of
this film are ever so slightly preposterous?); and
-
the ending, which is a marked
improvement on the ending of The Return of the King in that (a) amazingly, it
does not involve any slow motion shots of crying Hobbits AT ALL and (b) it does
not include anyone gratuitously bursting into song at their own coronation
(having said that I would absolutely love it if Prince Charles did a bit of
singing in elvish when his big day finally comes!). The scene where all of
Bilbo’s possessions are being auctioned off is handled brilliantly, starting
off as a comic interlude but with the tone becoming rather more wistful and
serious once the little hobbit gets back inside and finds his beloved home
almost completely empty. It almost feels like Jackson’s belated homage to the
Scouring of the Shire sequence from LOTR which was never filmed. Then of course
Martin Freeman turns back into Ian Holm and the whole trilogy slides seamlessly
into the beginning of LOTR.
Having now seen all 3 films, my feelings
are mixed. On the one hand, it is a shame that there are no more Middle Earth
films to look forward to on the horizon (although I suspect that the Hobbit may
well be remade, probably as one film, in a few decades time, although whether
the makers will be brave enough to follow it up with a LOTR remake is another
matter).
It is true that I haven’t seen any of the
Hobbit Extended Editions as yet, so there is still that to look forward to. I
am told that the Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition features a cameo from
none other than Sir Antony Sher, playing Thorin’s bonkers and doomed father,
Thrain (which is rather exciting from my perspective, as I am slightly
acquainted with one of Sir Antony’s old flames – it is not everyone who can say
that they know Thorin Oakenshield’s father’s ex-boyfriend!) But this feels like
the end of a journey I have been on for at least 16 years (when I found out
they were making LOTR) or possibly even 25 years (since I was first read the
Hobbit) and it has left me feeling rather wistful.
I also went into watching this film from a
slightly different perspective to the others, in that I have this year become a
father, and one who is looking forward to bringing the various peoples of
Middle Earth to life for my son in a few years time when I read him the books.
Whilst LOTR (the book) is more grown up in tone anyway, and the films suitably
reflect this, I do feel it is a shame that there is no film version of the
Hobbit which is a little less brutal and violent and more accessible to kids
than the one we have (I am not counting the godawful Rankin Bass cartoon). Of
course my “dream version” of the Hobbit, which would have been made in the
1980s and directed by Terry Gilliam or Rob Reiner, will never exist anyway. I
guess that Junior will just have to use his imagination for a little while
longer, which, all things considered, is no bad thing.
On the plus side, when we do come to watch
all six films together in order as a family, although we will be “saving the
best for last” with LOTR, I do feel that we will at least be able to watch the
Hobbit films without them looking “so” much worse than their sequels as to make
the comparison painful (like the Star Wars prequels do, for example). While
Peter Jackson has not surpassed himself with his second trilogy, he has not
dishonoured his own legacy either, and it is safe to say that I will be
watching the films on a pretty regular basis going forward (there is a space
already waiting on my shelf for the boxset). So on the whole, I think going
“There and Back Again” was worth it.
