Suffers from Jackson's egotism and 'Phantom Menace' prequel syndrome

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2014)

Can I really hate 'The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies'? Possibly but I'd be something of a hypocrite if I did. This is a Jackson film through and through. His tendencies as a filmmaker and writer are dialed up to their utmost extremities. I do like Jackson and even after re-watching his first 'Hobbit' effort I came to grudgingly appreciating it even if it was flawed. The problem here though is that the movie isn't much of a movie even by Jackson's standards. The entire film is one long battle sequence for the most part. Does Jackson do a battle sequence well? Of course. If such a thing is all you are concerned with then this film may be a masterpiece. I look back though to 'Fellowship of the Ring' which was Jackson's first and best Middle Earth film. It had spectacle and drawn out action to be sure but it realized much like Tolkien did that Middle Earth with all it's wonders was only as good as the characters that inhabit it. This film assumes too much(or too little) of it's audiences. I very much get the feeling Jackson felt he had already done everything he needed to with his characters and so no new nuances are explored. What follows is a battle and fan service...
I wrote in my original view of 'An Unexpected Journey' that despite the flaws of that film Jackson was spot on in his casting of Martin Freeman in the title role. I stand by that. Had this been a concise 'Hobbit' adaptation that actually cared about hobbits and not warriors then I would say Freeman could have given an Academy Award winning performance. My biggest problem with this picture is that Bilbo is a prop, baggage meant for the dwarfs and bigger warriors to carry. He gets so little screen time to really do anything significant at all. More time and emphasis is given to Legolas ( who was not in the original novel) and Tauriel (who does not exist in any Tolkien work). I am reminded of Thorin Oakenshield's dying words to Bilbo which touched me greatly as I read Tolkien's novel,"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world". Jackson has never valued food and cheer and song. He's valued warriors. A throw away moment to every other viewer struck me profoundly. Bilbo is about to be attacked by Orcs and he still flinches. Couldn't Jackson have allowed Bilbo to have gained his courage to actually fight alongside the big boys? Couldn't he have saved them by this point in the story? It would have given weight to a title character that the film really doesn't care about. It would have given Martin Freeman, an excellent actor, something to do. Why couldn't Bilbo have destroyed Azog the defiler?
There's a lot of fan service here. Annoyingly so. I was reminded a lot of the 'Star Wars' prequels who would take the time to consistently wink at the camera. Why is this necessary? I suppose it's fun but the level this film takes it to is ridiculous. I think it exists merely because Jackson knows he cannot fill this film to a normal capacity. This film is padded beyond being reasonable and so he tries to borrow credibility from his superior films. It doesn't work and is just silly. I'm tired of gloomy pretentious dialogue about Sauron.
I suppose though that I cannot really hate this film. I can dislike things about it but the formula still works. There's as always a lot of imagination and passion to the performances. Jackson can effectively stage a huge battle scene and that is commendable. It's more fun than any other big action set pieces that have come out this year. The problem is that while the battle is spectacular not much else is.