The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armies
How to maim your dragon
Of al the Hobbit trilogy, The Battle Of The Five Armies was arguably Peter Jackson’s biggest challenge. With most of the standout moments from the book already out of the way (Gollum, the spiders, the barrel chase, the natter with Smaug), this was a film based around a skirmish many consider a footnote that takes place after the real story is done. How could Jackson possibly base an entire epic movie on such narrow foundations? Surely this would be where the folly of splitting a brief source novel into three movies would be well and truly exposed?
We needn’t have worried. While it’s not up there with his Tolkien cycle’s best, this is a fitting end (or should that be middle?) to Jackson’s saga, mixing blockbuster spectacle with some intimate, tender character moments. That it works at all is down to two key decisions: making sure this is the shortest jaunt to Middle-earth yet (no room for unnecessary filler here), and holding back the end of Smaug’s story to open this movie, even though dramatic logic tells you it should’ve been wrapped up last time out.
It’s a choice that proves bang on the money, because while it left us with an unsatisfying cliffhanger for The Desolation Of Smaug, the dragon’s assault on Lake-town opens this third film with the killer hook it needs. Without wasting time on any kind of flashback or prologue, we’re straight into the silver-tongued lizard’s fiery bombing raid. It’s a wonderful sequence (albeit one that’s over too quickly) that instantly seizes your attention, even though it feels like it’s a leftover from a different movie – it’s like opening The Empire Strikes Back with Luke blowing up the Death Star.
Fighting talk
And there’s the conundrum. Had the dragon not been in The Battle Of The Five Armies, the movie wouldn’t have hung together. After the Smaug episode, there’s nearly an hour of posturing, arguing and reflecting as various armies get ready for war. (We know they’re getting ready for war because they say so. Many times.) It’s an effective crescendo to battle, but in
a film that’s effectively one long final act, it would have made for a pretty mediocre opening.
When things do finally kick off, the fight proves worth the wait. With several factions camped outside the newly freed Dwarf stronghold of Erebor, the scale is pitched somewhere between the tense siege of Helm’s Deep and the sprawling scrap of Pelennor Fields. OK, there’s a little bit of Anchorman 2 to the way more and more groups join the battle – you almost expect Wes Mantooth and his Channel 9 Evening News team to trash talk an Orc – but it’s marshalled effortlessly by Jackson, who pulls all the disparate elements together in a way few directors could match.
The battle is endlessly inventive, with the Orcs, Elves, Men, Dwarves and Eagles displaying numerous ingenious tactics, and riding a big enough variety of steeds to sustain every verse of ‘Old MacDonald’. Also, Jackson knows when to punctuate the carnage with a gag or a tender moment, making this the antithesis of Michael Bay’s humourless, confusing Transformers: Age Of Extinction.