Review: ‘Hobbit’ saga ends with one last battle, but story loses its focus

Posted on December 26, 2014

By MARK VIOLA

After three years–and seven hours, 53 minutes of film–director Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Hobbit” is finally complete. I said in my reviews of 2012’s “An Unexpected Journey” and last year’s “The Desolation of Smaug” that it would be impossible to provide a complete review of “The Hobbit” until I had seen the completed film and only then could I answer the question of whether Jackson stretched the material too far in making it three films.

As for “The Battle of Five Armies,” let me say that no matter the level of action and storytelling, this installment would have had a hard time living up the promise given by six hours of build-up. And so, it shouldn’t be too terribly surprising that it doesn’t. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, but ultimately, it feels like the overarching “Hobbit” trilogy peaked during its second chapter.

“The Hobbit” has suffered from the beginning by having too many dwarves, since it has never been able to give more than a handful of them any meaningful screentime or development. Thorin, as the leader, has always been the most recognizable, although Kili (Aidan Turner) was given a significant side story in the second chapter, involving a potential love interest in the elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), a character created solely for the films. The only other dwarf who gets regular screentime is Balin (Ken Scott), who serves as the wizened moral compass of the group.

Which brings us to the biggest problem of this third installment. Aside from those three, the dwarves we’ve been following have very little to do in this movie but stand around for a long time, then enter a massive battle so large they are quickly lost in the action.

I do realize I spent much of this review pointing out the film’s faults, but I did really enjoy it. The film we get in “The Battle of Five Armies” is full of visual splendors and mountains of action, but it is ultimately not the film I really was hoping for as a conclusion for the previous chapters.

Oh, to answer the question of whether this trilogy even needed to exist, I would say probably not, as it probably would have worked better as a pair. But if you asked me what exactly could have been cut to pare it down to just two movies, it would be hard to find a suitable answer. I will just choose to enjoy what we did get, because despite its problems, “The Hobbit” is still a very fun journey, there and back again.

The film is rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.

(This is a shortened version of the full review available in our printed or e-edition papers.)

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