adequate but dull, punctured by heart and awe

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2014)

Peter Jackson loves his excess. The man can't get enough - as not even a storyteller but as a spectacle-producer, a showman, he is like a starving kid at a Thanksgiving day buffet. This series is an indication of that, even if it's not all of his fault (it was originally two movies, maybe too much enough, until the Tolkien estate said it needed to be three movies - the studios, I'm sure, concurred). He and his team take what is essentially a children's book (The Hobbit, that is, which Tolkien wrote for his children initially years before LOTR) and make it into a 474 minute trilogy (credit time included), which means that a character like Bilbo Baggins, the little Hobbit-that-could who finds that he can be courageous and has the 'Right Stuff' as it were on an adventure, is a bit diminished in the epic scope and grandeur of what is really, in this case, about the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield and his quest to retake the castle of his father from the dragon, Smaug.
The Battle of the Five Armies picks up as a cliffhanger from the previous film - a rather uber-dramatic one at that - with Smaug getting out of the castle and set to attack a town. He does, people die and try to escape, and one man (Luke Evans, one of the more sturdier heroes of the series) fires an arrow that somehow gets through and kills the beast. One may scoff at how the dragon is so easily destroyed after such a build up at the end of 'Desolation' (and that whole set piece, by the way, was one of the highlights of this trilogy). But this is merely the set up, as it was, up to a point, in the book: armies are converging to get that treasure in the castle/mountain, and Thorin won't give it up. So, thus, we get war. Lots of it. Like, most of the film.
Thorin is an interesting character in that he is mostly defined by one trait here - until the script requires him to suddenly 'grow a pair' and lead his dwarfs out into battle with the rest of them - which is being a stubborn a-hole. Of course this can be chalked up to the 'dragon sickness', which could make him a victim in a sense. But Thorin throws this off so quickly and gets back into 'hero' mode that we're basically made to think that he can be sort of forgiven for being a stubborn a-hole for most of these films, this one most of all. And it's not that characters don't acknowledge it around him or call him out for it, far from it. But being that Thorin is more of the protagonist than Bilbo really is - or, if you must insist, co-protagonists - there isn't much to latch on to there.
Not that Jackson and company don't have other story threads to go on, one of those carried over from the last film involving the romance between a dwarf and an elf (the latter played by Evangeline Lilly, who just has those eyes that make her a good actress, even when she's tasked to play soppy melodrama). I had forgotten how strongly these two felt for each other - or how much of a sandwiched-in sub-plot it was (not in the book, but why carp at this point) - so when they have to face their struggles here in battle, I only felt a modicum of emotion for them to get back together or say 'f-you' to the haters of the other dwarfs and/or the elves (i.e. stone-faced Lee Pace).
Or maybe it was effective and I just didn't feel it, it may just be all on me for not really getting into this one, and certainly not as much as the previous two films (and those weren't much either). In 'Journey' and 'Smaug' at least I had a major set piece to hang on to - and the ones with Gollum and Smaug respectively are some of the great pieces of cinema in this whole Tolkien six-film run, to give Jackson/Cumberbatch/Serkis etc credit here. Is there one here? I'm not sure there is, despite the attack on the opening carrying over from the last film. That's merely the appetizer for the glut of CGI action that takes up MOST of the film here. And that would be fine... if it wasn't monotonous.
And perhaps it's also on me to get in or not get into this action. But at a certain point, how many times can you see an orc trying to kill someone and it doesn't carry the simplistic weight of a video game. And this isn't even to knock video games, except to say that this is a typical, adequate, mostly well-put-together but still kind of soulless video game. Jackson puts in some of the bigger orcs with features that look cool, or a moment like Legolas jumping up stairs that are crumbling under him that are just funny (intentionally or not), and yet it's all just SO much and little of it sticks.
The good news is there's a bit more Bilbo in the film, which gives more time to Martin Freeman who has nailed this character every step of the way and made him a joy to watch. He even makes latter-film scenes with Thorin count, at a point where I thought I didn't have much care for the character (not that Armitage doesn't try, but he's just... okay I guess). Overall, Battle of the Five Armies delivers TONS of effects, TONS of epic, sweeping shots of New Zealand (duh), TONS declarative moments and moments of humor that are hit or miss - and the always dependable likes of McKellan and Blanchett and so on. I just wish it left me with something more than feeling dulled by much of it.