Despite the admirable Martin Freeman, this last film of a bloated trilogy offers few departures from a tried and tested formula.
And so, in the end, we find ourselves once again at the beginning, having travelled there and back again in the company of elves, dwarves, dragons and hobbits a journey which started 13 years (and more than 17 screen-hours) ago with the unveiling of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001. Back then, the scope and scale of Peter Jacksons visual imagination was breathtaking. Animators like Ralph Bakshi had taken a crack at Tolkiens weighty tomes before, but Jackson was making game-changing use of computer graphics to blur the line between the real and the imagined. Having never cared for the source novels, I found myself wholly transported to Middle-earth, swept away by the sheer cinematic force of Jacksons vision. How long ago that all seems now.
Like the Star Wars prequels, the Hobbit movies were always destined to disappoint. Originally slated for direction as a two-parter by Pans Labyrinth maestro Guillermo del Toro, the series returned to Jacksons helmsmanship following lengthy production delays, and promptly expanded into a trilogy via the addition of extraneous appendices and gender-balancing new characters (viz Evangeline Lillys Tauriel). Yet like the haunted Thorin Oakenshield (a Shakespearean Richard Armitage), who spends much of this final movie holed up beneath the Lonely Mountain, bedazzled by an undulating sea of gold, one wonders whether the purity of Jacksons original quest hasnt been lost amid the series shiny success. Fans of the first two Hobbit movies may not be disappointed by this final instalment, which offers few departures from the formula of yore, but those who remember the risks Jackson took with Bad Taste, Braindead, Heavenly Creatures and even his King Kong reboot may find themselves wishing for more than just more of the same.
We open with a spectacular pre-credits set piece in which the enraged dragon Smaug once again voiced by a lizard-tongued Benedict Cumberbatch lays siege to Lake-town, raining fire from the heavens. Its a bravura curtain-raiser, an air-raid orchestrated with a dynamic skill which suggests that Jacksons long-nurtured Dam Busters remake wont be short on blitzy spectacle. As buildings burn and innocents falter, Lake-towns greasy Master (Stephen Fry) attempts to make off with the loot, introducing a note of humour to the carnage (if only we could save more people, but theyre just not worth it), selling his soul down the river as Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) strikes out with his righteous arrows.
Sadly, little that follows can hold a candle to that kinetic opener. While the second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug, largely dispensed with the endless tea-party pootlings of opener An Unexpected Journey to serve up a succession of fairground thrill-rides, Five Armies has more than its fair share of elaborately tressed actors reciting lumpen expository or emotional dialogue while brooding CGI landscapes roll endlessly in the background. It doesnt help that Jackson shoots every meeting with a panoramic swirl which accentuates the virtual artifice; although once hailed as a potential successor to David Lean, Jacksons cinematic instincts are here singly overshadowed by a computer game aesthetic. Even the more action-packed moments suffer from a superfluity of weightless runny-jumpy-stabby action better suited to Assassins Creed, although a scene in which one of our many heroes leaps unfeasibly atop tumbling rocks makes him look less like Ezio than Super Mario; I half expected him to gather spinning gold coins en route. As for the titular final conflict, despite an abundance of goblins, trolls, bats, eagles and massive Dune/Tremors-style worms, its no Battle of Helms Deep. Yes, theres a lovely Kurosawa moment when the elves leap in formation over the shielded ranks of dwarves, catching their attackers unaware. But elsewhere, despite the much vaunted darkness of this finale, its a succession of clanging and banging that continues for what seems like an eternity only without the sense of history in the making.
There are, of course, plus points, most notably the irrepressible Martin Freeman, who has made the role of Bilbo Baggins his own. With his flustered perseverance and tirelessly quizzical expression, Bilbo wrestles the prototypical Tolkien themes at the heart of this tale (the malady of riches, the corruption of power) with deceptive levity and engaging sprightliness. No wonder McKellens perpetually pipe-smoking Gandalf is so keen on the little fellow; you really miss him when hes off screen, which is often, as the narrative slips hither and yon, variously addressing its multi-stranded distractions.
And what of the future? Since Jackson first set foot in Middle-earth we have seen the dawn of performance capture, which organically combines acting with computer graphics, and the widespread rejection of the faster 48 frames-per-second format in which studios and audiences alike seem to have lost both faith and interest. He leaves the Shire in rude health, the future of fantasy cinema changed forever by his work, the legacy of Tolkien solemnly enshrined in the annals of movie history.
Now it really is time to move on.
