When Five Tribes Go To War....

"Fuck Off Legolas!"

So I finally, finally got around to seeing 'The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies' last night. I know, I know - slovenly on my part - but here's the thing....I read the book as a child but never finished it. As far as I'm concerned, the story of 'The Hobbit' ends once Smaug is out of the way. To be honest 'The Hobbit' ends for me once Gollum is out of the way....but that's just me. What I'm trying to say is that I never felt any pressing need to see the conclusion.  But here it is and....well, I enjoyed it...but I'm also glad it's all over.

I applaud Peter Jackson for what he has done. He filmed the unfilmable, remained true to his singular vision over 15 years and pushed technical boundaries. For the most part he didn't fuck it up, which is truly remarkable.

Now I may not particularly like the third LOTR film and I never want to sit through 'The Two Towers' again, but that's my problem with Tolkien not Jackson. Tolkien doesn't really lend itself well the way scripts are structured. For me LOTR and The Hobbit both have great openings, languid middles and "are we there yet?" endings. But plotting kind of misses the point of Tolkien anyway. Tolkien is about immersing yourself in the detail, the descriptions, the glacial shift of events, the sense of a truly never ending narrative - something properly mythical. It's amazing that Jackson managed to capture the essence of that and make it entertaining for a mass audience over the run of six films.

There's no point me reviewing the film properly, you'll have seen it by now and have your own judgement. For the record I liked it the least of the three 'Hobbit' films and have plenty of gripes but at least it didn't quite turn into the CGI battle bore I expected, but I did think it lacked a little of the awe and wonder of the other films. At times it did feel strangely dated already - something that wasn't helped by the use of some shoddy back projection work. Of all the films in the series this one noticeably has the most inconsistent standards for SFX. It runs the whole gamut from wonderful to laughable with some bits clearly loving laboured over and others rushed through for completion date.

The battle of the five armies becomes the battle of some superhero dwarves on a hilltop  - but strangely this seems to work.

Bilbo gets lost a little - even though it is his story and he has little to do other than hold the ring, hold the Arkenstone and roll his eyes. He doesn't actually do very much of anything. But that's not to take anything away from Martin Freeman who is reliably brilliant and the smartest bit of casting that Jackson did for the whole saga.

Those dwarves though. All looking like they went to the same hairdresser and got a blow dry. You expect one of them to have a purple rinse.

And Smaug went down too easy for my liking.

And Legolas is still in it. I'll miss inwardly telling him to fuck off every time he's on screen.

And "Love hurts so much!". Thank you Tauriel, you may go now.

And what was with the comedy coward routine?

And how come the eagles  save the day again (as they do in LOTR) but we spend no time with them, or learn anything about them?

And what was with the worms? What did they do?

And...and....well, you see...the more you think about it, the more I don't like it... so I'm going to stop there. I think the 'The Hobbit' on the whole was great fun, an exuberant blast of family entertainment. It was never going to please everybody, it was a terrible idea to spread it out over three films instead of two and it has plenty of flaws but I'm glad it's there and I'm glad it's not an abomination.

But I'm also glad that I won't have to sit through another one.