Too Much Middle-Earth

Rating: 4/10 (15 March 2015)

'The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies' was, it has to be said, one of the most pointless cinematic experiences I've had in years. The 'Lord of the Rings' films were events. People waited for them with genuine excitement and anticipation. Surely, Mr Jackson took certain minor liberties with JRRT's text (the linking of Arwen's well being to the destruction of the One Ring still strikes me as odd), but the narrative approach was consistent and the designs for the various peoples of Middle Earth astounding. The Hobbit films, though, have become an exercise in endurance - grafting on additional sub-stories which have no relation to and distract enormously from what should be a simple, fun adventure story. Structurally it is a great juddering mess: the first ten minutes belong at the end of 'Desolation of Smaug' (the ending of which lacked any impact because it was inexplicably cut short) - and the You Think It's All Over...But We'll Have Just ONE More Redundant Fight Scene...Then Do It All Over Again attitude sparks of a Director SERIOUSLY in need of a good Script Editor. As with the first two films, many of the additional scenes are there, it seems, because Jackson thought a particular image or location would look cool, and no-one had the balls to tell him enough is enough. Many of the CGI scenes looked a tad shoddy, and the invented Tauriel sub-plot really got on my nerves...Tolkein DOES really need to reprAzent da ladies more, but creating a feisty female character only to reduce her to the filling in an unrequited Elf/Dwarf love sandwich REALLY isn't an improvement. Pretty, pompous, predictable, over-produced...and two whole fricking films longer than it needed to be.