Extended Edition

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, November 9, 2015

The extended editions of Peter Jackson'sfilms are widely considered superior to their theatrical version predecessors. You'll find few fans who'd argue otherwise. The opposite has proved true oftrilogy, though. The extended cuts ofand nowtake three bloated, over-stuffed movies and make them even fatter. With' 164-minute cut, indulgence remains the driving force, extra snippets far outnumber full scenes, and bloodshed -- of the distracting, detached-from-the-series R-rated variety no less -- is really the only addition of note. A few decently strong character beats and touching moments have been tacked on, particularly during the new and improved battle with Sauron and at the end of the film, when several heroes are laid to rest. But this isn't. Opinions will of course vary, but the theatrical version ofstrikes me as a bit better than Jackson's latest, and likely last, foray into Middle-earth.is fine, I suppose... in a dutifully but dully entertaining sort of way. Its flaws are far more apparent than previousentries, Jackson's love of cartoonish hijinks is at an all time high, and everything from the plotting to the pacing to the hurried finale feel less and less like aprequel as the film trudges along. But it's hard to out and out hate a movie made with the level of sheer, increasingly silly joy Jackson invests here, even as he teeters into self-parody, ramping the action up so high that the whole ofsaga nearly comes tumbling down. Unfortunately, that self-parody is arguably made even more apparent in the strangely hyper-violent 164-minute Extended Edition cut.When last we left dear Master Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Thorin (Richard Armitage) and his dwarven kin had entered Erebor, only to inadvertently unleash the deadly dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) on the nearby human settlement of Laketown. Meanwhile, half a world away, Gandalf (Ian McKellan) had been captured by the Necromancer (also Cumberbatch), who was revealed to be that ancient evil, Sauron. Aslurches off the starting line, Jackson makes all too quick work of both storylines; pitting Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) and his last black arrow against Smaug the Magnificent in a fight atop a burning Laketown tower, and assembling Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) to Dol Guldur to rescue the Grey Wizard from the clutches of Sauron and the ghostly Nazgûl.The problem is both subplots are resolved so hastily that the film begins its first-act run on a bad ankle, stumbling into an anticlimactic hitch from the get-go. It's clear Smaug should have been dealt with -- to completion -- by the end of the second film. Not tacked onto the opening of the third as a notably truncated ten-minute vignette. Also clear: the Sauron fight Jackson has been building towards sincewas (mostly) for nothing. Wrapped up with a poorly realized light show and a shrug of the shoulders, it begs the question: why was the Necromancer presented as such a threat when his defeat would be handed to our heroes so easily? (Although perhaps more pressing a question is this: was the Sauron showdown left on the shelf until the last minute? The Weta Workshop visual effects are uncharacteristically weak, looking like the product of a throwback '80s fantasy rather than a film with a multi-million dollar budget.)With Smaug and the Necromancer out of the way (among other developments, like Bard's semi-reluctant rise to leader of men), it's on to the protracted second act of. Or rather, the remainder of what's essentially a sprawling action scene spread across an hour and a half of screentime. The spectacle feels thin. Sort of stretched. Like butter scraped over too much bread. And the final word in what was once a heated debate -- shouldhave been split into three films? -- is now practically certain. No. Jackson should have stuck with a lean, mean two films, shaving the fat, ditching the filler, and sticking with the core of everything that makes J.R.R. Tolkien's original book the breezy, delightful adventure it is. Interestingly, Jackson visibly suffers the consequences of his decision, finding himself in a predicament he's never encountered on aproject. There's very little ground left to cover inand plenty of time to cover it, making it the most bloated film intrilogy despite having the shortest runtime of any entry in the six-moviesaga.The story doesn't unfold, it explodes. Thorin continues to spiral into madness, and the dwarves prepare for war while contemplating a mutiny of sorts. Bilbo is further relegated to the proverbial bench, with almost nothing of significance to do beyond delivering the Arkenstone to Lee Pace's Thranduil. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) finally makes his full transformation into a videogame protagonist, controlling a troll by driving a sword into its head and steering it by way of its brainy bits, running up falling rocks mid-swordfight, and performing other head-shaking feats of physics-defying godhood. Kili (Aidan Turner) and Tauriel's (Evangeline Lilly) near-romance is milked for all its worth. Ryan Gage's Alfrid is in the mix for... erm, some reason, Wormtonguing in Bard's ear. (And he pops up..) Thranduil and Bard are eventually sidelined, without the compelling closure to their arcsseemed to promise. Plenty of alpha-male chest-puffing consumes Thorin, Thranduil and guest dwarf Dáin (Billy Connolly, having a blast). Azog returns. The worms frommake a cameo. Some rousing but repetitive violence ensues, with a few inspired details cooked up in the always attentive production lab. (The signal towers used by the orcs and goblin hordes to coordinate field movements are an especially subtle but nice touch.) And the titular battle of the five armies shifts and evolves as expected, with largely CG legions barreling headlong into opposing CG hordes.There are several admittedly moving character beats, the majority of which prevent the film from leaping foolishly into heap after heap of Big Dumb Fun. Freeman's scenes with Armitage and McKellan are among the film's best, Pace exudes authority and fury with unnerving focus, the Company actors seize a number of sequences and declare them their own (Turner, Graham McTavish, Ken Stott and Dean O'Gorman chief among them), and Lilly flexes her dramatic muscle, even as Tauriel remains one of Jackson's more controversial additions to the story. The rest of the cast is terrific as well, no matter how questionable some script and story choices might be, but the war is what you paid for, and the war is what Jackson delivers. The same could be said ofI suppose, but its stakes were higher, sacrifices greater, villains more captivating, heroes more magnetic, and its battles more grounded and invigorating.Bottom line?is a decently engaging three-star amusement park ride, but be warned: the more you scrutinize, the deeper you look, and the closer you examine all the moving parts, the more dissatisfied you're likely to become. And it isn't long before that dissatisfaction breeds disappointment. Movie magic gives way to cheap tricks, character drama is often minimalized, and too much heavy lifting is left to the always excellent cast, who aren't given much to work with in Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens' grunt-heavy screenplay. Just over the course of penning this review, my trigger finger has been itching, tempting me to drop my movie score another half-point. So why so much contempt? The trajectory offilms has been clear since the dwarves faced the Goblin King in, as has Jackson's relative lack of real passion for Tolkien's text.Withtrilogy, every effort was made to honor the books, barring several widely discussed changes the filmmakers' acknowledged countless times as necessary evils. Jackson didn't have a burning desire to maketrilogy, though; signing on only after Guillermo del Toro bowed out. That initial reluctance seeps into. It's not that Jackson isn't passionate about the film he's made. He is, and his joy oozes out of each shot, scene and delirious clash of the Tolkien titans. It's just that his passion isn't in the original story. He loved Tolkien's "Rings." He merely had a fondness for "The Hobbit," and the difference becomes fairly obvious when comparing both trilogies.Be it the theatrical version or the new R-rated Extended Edition cut,is more successful when viewed solely as a conclusion of Jackson'strilogy. And even then it has big problems and bigger disappointments in store for fans; particularly fans of Tolkien's original book. As the sixth and final piece in thesaga, as a bridge betweenandfilms, or simply as an action drama, it undermines too much of what Jackson has spent fifteen years working to build.