Little Besides the Battle Scenes

Rating: 7/10 (14 January 2015)

"The Battle of the Five Armies" presumably marks the final instalment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's work. (Unless, of course, he is thinking of having a crack at "The Silmarillion"). The battle was dealt with in a single chapter of "The Hobbit"; its expansion into an epic feature film lasting well over two hours is symptomatic of the way in which this relatively short novel has been inflated into something far more grandiose in Jackson's hands.
The seemingly invincible dragon Smaug is killed early on by the courageous archer Bard while attacking the city of Laketown. This leaves the Dwarfs and their leader Thorin Oakenshield in possession of the dragon's treasure which they claim is theirs by right. Unfortunately, other parties also have claims to the treasure, and two Dwarf armies, one led by Thorin, the other by his Glaswegian cousin Dain, prepare to do battle with armies of Men, Elves and Orcs. (I know Glasgow is not actually in Middle Earth, but Billy Connolly plays Dain as though he were a denizen of the Gorbals).
Another strand in the plot deals with the development of Thorin's character. When we first see him in this film, he is suffering from what Gandalf calls "dragon sickness", that is to say that he has been corrupted by the dragon's wealth. He is so selfish, greedy and arrogant that he is prepared to fight the Elves and Men, who should be his natural allies, for possession of it; only later does he come back to his senses and make common cause with them against the Orcs.
In terms of spectacle and excitement, the battle scenes can compare with anything in Jackson's earlier "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Unfortunately, the film contains little else except battle scenes. The plot has many twists and turns, but these mostly involve the arrival of yet another army on the battlefield, the shifting alliances between the various factions or a reversal of fortune suffered by one side or another on the battlefield. Some of the actors are good, notably Martin Freeman as the resourceful Bilbo, Richard Armitage as the tormented Thorin Ian McKellen as Gandalf, but they tend to be overshadowed by the grand spectacle being played out behind them. "The Battle of the Five Armies" did nothing to overturn my view that it was a mistake to try and film "The Hobbit" in the same style as "The Lord of the Rings". 7/10