The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

And so the rather absurdly stretched-out film versions of The Hobbit come to an end. It’s probably a little sad that what will be remembered, rather than the huge amount of work that went into making this film spectacular and beautiful, will be the superficial things: the padding and the original characters – including the elf-dwarf love story. The protracted battles with orc leaders. The armoured war-pigs. Actually, I’m not sad about that part. Armoured war-pigs are awesome.

It’s been a very long time since I read The Hobbit, and I must say that the events of this film are what I remember least about the original. I remember very well the trolls turning to stone and the dwarves in barrels and Gollum and Smaug...but really very little about the Battle of the Five Armies. Talking with friends and family and checking summaries, though, it seems that largely, what happens is brief: the ‘nice guy’ armies make their demands, the nasty orcs and goblins show up, Bilbo gets knocked out, and when he wakes up he finds that Thorin is in a bad way and, basically, that Beorn the Bear has sorted everything out.

I can understand the desire to take that and spin it into a much larger battle. Especially in the Peter Jackson universe of huge clashes between armies. I mean, there are five of them! Hard to resist, really. And things are done with clarity: the set-up to dispatch Smaug has all been done and Bard does it with little fuss – yet the town is destroyed. Thorin is changed by reclaiming the mountain, becoming like a dragon: proud and selfish, unwilling to pay his debts. Desolate, now, the people of Lake Town march to the mountain to seek refuge and provisions as promised to them by Thorin, but are met and given provisions by the beautiful elves of the Lake. The elves are there because some of their most valuable treasures were taken by the dragon and they wish to reclaim them. Thorin holes himself and his company up in the mountain, preparing for a siege and offering absolutely nothing, and thus the stage is set for battle.

When it looks like the combined forces of men and elves are just going to storm the handful of dwarves, Thorin’s cousin Dain Ironfoot shows up with a heavily-armed company. The third army! Dain is hot-headed, played with aplomb by Billy Connollly, which was a joy. Before they can clash, though, the orcs under Azog appear through tunnels that come courtesy of some sandworms borrowed from Dune, so huge you would think they would have been better off coming up under the armies and causing some damage rather than just making transportation easier.

Anyway, because the orcs decided to appear just then rather than waiting for the other armies to destroy one another as would have been sensible, everyone turns on them. The orcs decide that rather than concentrating all their forces on the armed threat, they’ll draw the men and elves thin by going after the women and children sheltering in the abandoned city of Dale. Thorin finally comes to himself and joins the battle, rallying the ailing dwarves, and then goes after Azog.

Of course, this is all a trap and another orc army is on the way to mop up the remnants. Also, taking out Azog is apparently not that effective anyway, because the armies carry on perfectly normally without him giving commands as he gets distracted by one-on-one fights. As for Beorn? Well, he may not play quite such a role and only gets about 4 seconds of screen time, but effectively he and the eagles are still instrumental. Does this last part seem a bit contrived? Well, yes, but it also makes sense of Azog and co not exactly employing the best strategies.

Ultimately, though, this film is about the joy of all-out action and spectacle. If shouldn’t be treated as intelligent, even by the scale of the main LOTR trilogy. It is straightforward, joyful fun. And I got something of a thrill from watching Christopher Lee kicking some butt and Galadriel getting some pretty excessive powers – but which came with the kind of spectacle I was hoping we’d get with Gandalf vs Saruman in the first film, instead of old man dance-off.

The Hobbit was never enough material for three substantial films, but I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed the ponderous, rather insubstantial ones we got. And Bilbo remains rather more likeable than Frodo ever was...