Or: How The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies failed to bring the story of the One Ring full circle.
This is an article outlining the disappointments of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, from the perspective of a Lord of the Rings superfan who knows Peter Jackson could have done it so much better. For a positive review of the movie: fly, you fools.
Disclaimer: The Lord of the Rings is my favourite movie series of all time. For me, Peter Jackson managed what no filmmaker has managed to do before or since: create a fantasy world that felt real. A world that was inhabited by real characters who were layered and complex, played by actors who took their roles very seriously.
So naturally, when The Hobbit was first announced, I was ecstatic. After almost 10 years of wearing my LotR Extended Edition DVDs thin (including the bonus material discs, of course), I was excited about returning to Middle-earth, and to see Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves in action.
But the knowledge that the movie would be shot in 3D format had me worried about the world I was stepping into. Shooting for 3D has, in my experience, meant a movie that focused more on dangling tree branches in front of your face than actual storytelling.
And when I attended the midnight premiere of An Unexpected Journey, my fears were confirmed: with main characters that looked like they’d stepped out of a claymation (Bombur, I’m looking at you) running through cartoonish CGI sets, I understood already from the prologue that I was not stepping back into Middle-earth; I was stepping into your average fantasy movie.
But then we cut to Hobbiton, and there was Frodo. I felt a surge of nostalgia as I imagined his future adventures, and flashed back to everything that was about to happen. This wasn’t just a fantasy movie, it was Middle-earth, and it was Peter Jackson. He loves this world. It would be okay.
But it wasn’t.
While the first two The Hobbit instalments were entertaining enough, they lacked the epicness of Rings. And I don’t just mean that the story was epic (although it was); the true epicness came from the characters and their relationships with one another.
Even with a less exciting story to work with, The Hobbit still had the potential to develop strong relationships between the characters. They had 13 dwarves and a hobbit! Epic bromances all around. Plus, the plot had been expanded to include more of Gandalf’s story, and to feature Legolas, Sauron, Galadriel, and other major Lord of the Rings players. That must mean a more exciting adventure, with more time for character development, right? Wrong. Instead, this is what we got:
Repetitiveness (of shots and gags)
One of the best (if sometimes mocked) aspects of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the sweeping landscape shots that showed off beautiful New Zealand, while depicting our various adventurers moving through Middle-earth.
Tiny figures trekking their way through vast landscapes only helped add to the scope of the story. Unfortunately, The Hobbit‘s scenery sweeps didn’t have the same effect. For one, there were far too many of them, all similarly shot and styled. For another, the use of CGI was so obvious that, the wider the shots got, the more the movie felt like a cartoon.
And I’m not going to spend a long time pointing out the confusing, messy storytelling, because it’s one of the most common complaints about The Hobbit movies. But really, you can’t just cut from one random, unconnected plotline to another with a sweeping exodus shot and think that no one will notice that the transition doesn’t make any sense.
Then there was the appalling unibrowed Gríma Wormtongue ripoff character, Alfrid whatshisface. He wasn’t funny the first three times he was trying to run away with the gold, nor was he funny any of the other 17 times this gag was repeated. The cross-dressing scene was particularly trite.
Another issue was the repetitive use of extreme close-ups, especially of Bilbo, where the characters literally just raised their eyebrows at each other. It was like there was no emotion to show, and yet they just had to have those close-ups (that’s another drawback of shooting in 3D: your world becomes very limited, because everything behind the character’s face is usually completely blurred out. Hence the overuse of extreme close-up shots, even if there was no actual emotion to display).
This also meant that a lack of emotional engagement by certain key actors quickly became painfully apparent. It’s not easy to sit through a two-and-a-half hour adventure that centers on a character who looks like he doesn’t care very much about anything that’s happening unless the script calls for him to cry. (But, fair enough, it must be difficult to pour your soul into a character who doesn’t evolve in any way during the course of a three-part movie series.)
Lack of character development
Think about it: what were the actual emotional repercussions of what happened in this movie, for the characters who survived? There were absolutely no consequences, at least none we got to experience. For Bilbo, it’s kind of the point of The Hobbit — it’s “there and back again,” after all, a tiny hobbit embarking on an epic adventure, and returning unchanged (except for his recurring wanderlust, which alienates him from the other hobbits). It’s what Frodo so tragically wasn’t able to do at the end of Return of the King, and why he had to leave for the Grey Havens.
Yet this whimsical yo-yo character arc might have been more appropriate for a one-instalment adaptation. With three Hobbit movies all supposedly centering on Bilbo, it’d have been nice to see him go through some kind of change. And Bilbo isn’t the only static character: in fact, the only character who really evolves is Thorin (played brilliantly by Richard Armitage, who delivers the strongest performance of the trilogy). But while Thorin’s storyline is actually pretty engaging, at least until its rushed conclusion, it’s just not enough to keep us interested through a movie series with 16+ main characters.
The key to a good story, after all, is character. Character growth, development, and change. Even well-rounded Rings favourites Legolas and Gandalf were basically just avatars of themselves in this movie, being their good old awesome selves — but for what purpose? Secondary players like Radagast and Beorn came and went without consequence, and the majority of the dwarves did absolutely nothing of importance, other than Balin (sort of) and Dwalin (who had that one motivational speech that allowed Thorin to rather abruptly snap out of his funk).
Thorin and his two heirs died in this movie (although Fili’s death was so blink-and-you-miss-it, I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting). Wasn’t the whole point of the story that Durin’s descendants should take back the mountain? So what happened to the mountain and the gold? How was the central storyline of this series actually resolved?
The book does address this, albeit briefly (Daín, the random red-bearded dwarf briefly introduced in the battle, ends up being King Under the Mountain), but the movie completely fails to wrap anything up. It just ends.
Balin, the only surviving dwarf we sort of got to know, was left standing at the gates with some random other dwarves who never became more important than background singers in a band (which I guess they literally were). But what happened to them?
What happened to Ori and Nori and Oin and Gloin and all the other faces in the crowd whom we had been spending the last three movies following around? We’ll never know, because The Hobbit didn’t bother to actually make us care about them, instead spending its screen time on weird father-son Orc dynamics and repeated appearances by the deus ex eagles.
And don’t even get me started on Bard. Bard may have shot down the dragon (way to completely undermine the threat of Smaug, by the way; he was so scary in Desolation, but in Five Armies we were all just waiting for him to die so that the new storyline could begin), but did he develop? Did he change in any way? Sure, off screen he kind of sort of became a leader, maybe? But on screen, he just went from reluctant hero to reluctant hero. No more, no less.
In Lord of the Rings, even Legolas — the least important member of the fellowship — had character development, if not resolution. His non-CGI eyes (which looked much more real than in The Hobbit, by the way) held the inner emotions of the character, even though all he got to say were flowery book quotes like, “Blood has been spilled this night.”
Lack of character resolution
Let’s start with the big one: Tauriel. Okay, so Peter Jackson went to great lengths to develop a strong female character. I appreciate this, although the girl power effect was kind of nullified by Bard’s constantly screaming daughters who did nothing but hide while their brother protected them. Anyway. Evangeline Lilly did a fantastic job, and her character was interesting. Unfortunately, she was also kind of pointless.
Tauriel was an elf who fell in love with a dwarf. Despite how contrived this felt (and how cheesy their dialogue was), I actually thought that, if we had to have a romance, this was an innovative choice. It raised so many questions: what kind of life could they have had together? Would the elves and the dwarves try to split them up? Could they have children? Well… I guess we’ll never know, because it didn’t turn out to be important at all.
In this movie Tauriel politely declined Kili’s invitation to Dwarf Mountain, then ran around with Legolas for a bit, and finally caught up with Kili again just in time to watch him die. Then she had a very out-of-the-blue heart-to-heart with Thranduil… and the movie ended. There was no indication of what she’d do next, where she’d go, and why there was not so much as a trace of her in LotR.
And speaking of Lord of the Rings: when they decided to add Legolas to The Hobbit, I was excited, because finally we’d get to see why he hates dwarves. Yay, backstory! I figured Tauriel would probably die with Kili, leaving Legolas to feel like the dwarves took his love interest away from him.
But, nope. Legolas fought side by side with the dwarves, climbed falling rocks and did lots of cool but very cartoonish stunts, and then left his people behind to go find that-ranger-in-the-north-whose-name-is-Strider-hint-wink-barf.
Legolas’ grudging friendship with Gimli suddenly seems a lot less special.
An anticlimactic ending
Remember earlier, when I told you how happy I was to see Frodo in The Hobbit? I bet a lot of people were — that’s why Peter Jackson made such an effort to bring him back, and even gave Elijah Wood the Benjamin Button treatment. So, why the hell not bring him back for the end of the final film as well, to bookend the saga and bring the story full circle? It is all about a ring, after all.
If you look past the dwarf quest, The Hobbit is largely about Bilbo finding and using the One Ring. Adding a Frodo cameo to the beginning of The Hobbit tells fans that, hint hint, this is kind of an origin story. But then not having him at the end of the third movie makes it all kind of pointless.
Just imagine if Bilbo had returned to Hobbiton, and we’d had a scene in which a tiny dark-haired hobbit boy ran through the shot. Imagine him sitting on his front porch, maybe sharing a pipe of Old Toby with Gandalf. There’s your full circle. It’s that easy.
And, going a step further: if we’d had even the merest indication that Bilbo was about to make a major life choice — taking in his orphaned second cousin — it would show that, yes, Bilbo had somehow changed after his adventure. He’d learned the value of family, of having someone you care more about than your possessions, who could snap you out of whatever hold a magical piece of jewellery might have on you.
It might have given Thorin’s death just a little bit more emotional weight.
So, we’d have character growth, and we’d feel like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were connected. Why on earth Peter Jackson opted not to do this is beyond me. I mean, he had Elijah Wood there already! And it’s not like he didn’t want to connect the two trilogies, as proven by the contrived Aragorn reference and the fact that he had Billy Boyd (Pippin) singing the outro song.
Seeing Frodo’s story begin as Bilbo’s adventure ended would have been the perfect way to conclude The Hobbit. After all, in Lord of the Rings, Bilbo’s story ended as Frodo’s adventure began.
But, having said all of the above, I’m still very glad that Jackson and his team decided to make the Hobbit trilogy. It gave us more behind-the-scenes material, and briefly revived the fandom. As fans, we gather around the things we love, and the anticipation is as much a part of the enjoyment as the experience itself.
And this movie is going to make a lot of money. It’s going to have haters and supporters, and we can all shout at each other for infinity about whether or not it was as good as it should have been, but all I’m saying is that I expected more. I expected magic. Was that too much to hope for? No, because I’ve seen Peter Jackson do it before.
Unlike The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit isn’t a novel I hold particularly dear to my heart, and for that I’m grateful. I don’t love Bilbo the way I love Sam Frodo, and therefore I am not left heartbroken by the new trilogy — merely disappointed, knowing that Peter Jackson was capable of so much more than an aimless, action-driven CGI romp.
Note: Of course, I’m holding out hope that all of my issues will be resolved in the 30 minutes of extra footage we’ll see on the Extended Edition. After all, the cinematic cuts of The Lord of the Rings are terrible in comparison to the EEs. But until the DVD comes out, I can only judge by the cut I’ve seen, and I can’t imagine that Peter Jackson would really prioritise Alfrid gags over important character resolutions.