The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Year: 2014
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Connelly, Martin Freeman, Christopher Lee, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Lee Pace, Aidan Turner & Hugo Weaving
Runtime: 144 (Theatrical) 164 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 15
Published: 12/08/22
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Connelly, Martin Freeman, Christopher Lee, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Lee Pace, Aidan Turner & Hugo Weaving
Runtime: 144 (Theatrical) 164 mins (Extended)
BBFC: 15
Published: 12/08/22
It’s always sad when you come to realise that something you enjoyed as a child only came about because of bad things. In a capitalist society we are used to nasty companies doing nasty things in the name of profits and we don’t have time to react to each and every single one of them. But when it happens in art it’s sometimes difficult to disassociate the art, the brand if you will, from the person behind it. The Hobbit trilogy had a rough ride from the get go, but I don’t think anybody expected it to end up going the way it did. Not only did WB studio interference and creative hubris on the part of Peter Jackson stand in the way of adapting perhaps the most beloved children’s story of the twentieth century, but in the time after The Hobbit films released there was a lot of talk about the damage those films and The Lord of the Rings trilogy did to the country of New Zealand and its people. The Battle of the Five Armies then stands not only as a shameful whimper for the series to end on, but a testament to everything that was wrong with the entire Middle Earth franchise…no matter how good we all think The Lord of the Rings was.
Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) has been unleashed from his slumber in Erebor. Thorin (Richard Armitage) has succumb to the powerful effects of dragon’s gold. Laketown has been destroyed and man has allied itself with the Wood Elves for aid. With Azog’s (Manu Bennett) army of Orc’s closing in on the Misty Mountain, and everybody else willing to fight to the death for the treasure inside, the beginning of the end for Middle Earth is nigh. Only a Hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has the power to ensure victory for dwarves, men, and elves.
The Battle of the Five Armies can best be described as a two-and-a-half-hour computer animated punch up with fifteen minutes of story sprinkled throughout. Where The Desolation of Smaug suffered pacing issues by being around an hour too long, The Battle of the Five Armies has no pace because it stretches what should have been the final twenty minutes or so of The Desolation of Smaug into a nearly three-hour film. There’s not an awful lot to dissect here so it’ll be a reasonably short review if I was just going to talk about the film, but I’m going to go into the horrendous practices going on behind the scenes later on to give some context as to how this billion-dollar trilogy effectively destroyed the film industry of an entire country.
Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) has been unleashed from his slumber in Erebor. Thorin (Richard Armitage) has succumb to the powerful effects of dragon’s gold. Laketown has been destroyed and man has allied itself with the Wood Elves for aid. With Azog’s (Manu Bennett) army of Orc’s closing in on the Misty Mountain, and everybody else willing to fight to the death for the treasure inside, the beginning of the end for Middle Earth is nigh. Only a Hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has the power to ensure victory for dwarves, men, and elves.
The Battle of the Five Armies can best be described as a two-and-a-half-hour computer animated punch up with fifteen minutes of story sprinkled throughout. Where The Desolation of Smaug suffered pacing issues by being around an hour too long, The Battle of the Five Armies has no pace because it stretches what should have been the final twenty minutes or so of The Desolation of Smaug into a nearly three-hour film. There’s not an awful lot to dissect here so it’ll be a reasonably short review if I was just going to talk about the film, but I’m going to go into the horrendous practices going on behind the scenes later on to give some context as to how this billion-dollar trilogy effectively destroyed the film industry of an entire country.
Firstly, what works? Well, the first ten minutes or so are the best in the entire film, showcasing Smaug’s attack on Laketown which was so unceremoniously left on a cliff-hanger from the previous film. That being said Smaug is dead before the opening titles even show, and from here on out it’s a real bore.
It starts strong enough with the plight of the people of Laketown and showcasing Thorin’s descent into madness. But by the time we get to the eponymous battle around an hour into the film any semblance of plot goes out of the window aside from a few fleeting glimpses of it here and there.
We do also get to see the conclusion of how The Hobbit sets up The Lord of the Rings, and it’s fine I suppose. The problem is that it is revealed that the Necromancer which Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Saruman (Christopher Lee), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Elrond (Hugo Weaving) were talking about in An Unexpected Journey turns out to be Sauron reincarnated. They have a fight with the Ringwraiths and then Sauron runs away with his tail between his legs to Mordor. It’s kind of sad that it ends that way because it was the last performance of Christopher Lee before his death and it’s such a bum note for him to go out on. His performance is great as ever, but you can tell he was so excited to be back playing Saruman only for it to be a relatively small portion in such an unworthy film. It also irks me because these very characters are surprised about the return of Sauron in Fellowship, yet they literally see him and acknowledge his existence in this film. Dear Peter Jackson, if you’re making a prequel, at least make sure your characters don’t learn information they supposedly don’t know until the next film. The fact that the Necromancer is Sauron doesn’t even matter because he has nothing to do with this story, if you’re watching these films in chronological order then you’ll have no idea who Sauron even is, but if you’re watching these films after LotR then it doesn’t make any sense as to why he’s there.
What doesn’t work at all then? Basically, the rest of the film. But to be a bit more specific here’s a quick rundown of things that straight up suck about Battle of Five Armies.
First up let’s talk dwarves. The dwarf party already got minimised a lot in Desolation of Smaug but in Battle of Five Armies it’s worse again. They might as well not be there because what little they do in the film is superficial at best, and not having them there really sucks the soul of the film completely dry because these characters are why The Hobbit should have been adapted in the first place. Then we have Kili (Aidan Turner), Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) in cinematic history’s least compelling love triangle. It actually takes up quite a decent portion of this film and oh boy does it suck. It’s so bad that Kili’s death is actually given more emotional weight to it than Thorin’s, despite the fact that Thorin and Bilbo were the driving force of the entire film.
Then there’s all of the awful, and I mean atrociously bad CGI. Almost the entire film is entirely CGI and it looks genuinely terrible, I mean, just look at what they did to poor Billy Connelly!
Long story short, because I’m not wasting any more time explaining why this film is awful, don’t watch it. Or maybe watch the first and last ten minutes and that’ll be good enough if you’re absolutely desperate to watch the entire Hobbit trilogy.
It starts strong enough with the plight of the people of Laketown and showcasing Thorin’s descent into madness. But by the time we get to the eponymous battle around an hour into the film any semblance of plot goes out of the window aside from a few fleeting glimpses of it here and there.
We do also get to see the conclusion of how The Hobbit sets up The Lord of the Rings, and it’s fine I suppose. The problem is that it is revealed that the Necromancer which Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Saruman (Christopher Lee), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Elrond (Hugo Weaving) were talking about in An Unexpected Journey turns out to be Sauron reincarnated. They have a fight with the Ringwraiths and then Sauron runs away with his tail between his legs to Mordor. It’s kind of sad that it ends that way because it was the last performance of Christopher Lee before his death and it’s such a bum note for him to go out on. His performance is great as ever, but you can tell he was so excited to be back playing Saruman only for it to be a relatively small portion in such an unworthy film. It also irks me because these very characters are surprised about the return of Sauron in Fellowship, yet they literally see him and acknowledge his existence in this film. Dear Peter Jackson, if you’re making a prequel, at least make sure your characters don’t learn information they supposedly don’t know until the next film. The fact that the Necromancer is Sauron doesn’t even matter because he has nothing to do with this story, if you’re watching these films in chronological order then you’ll have no idea who Sauron even is, but if you’re watching these films after LotR then it doesn’t make any sense as to why he’s there.
What doesn’t work at all then? Basically, the rest of the film. But to be a bit more specific here’s a quick rundown of things that straight up suck about Battle of Five Armies.
First up let’s talk dwarves. The dwarf party already got minimised a lot in Desolation of Smaug but in Battle of Five Armies it’s worse again. They might as well not be there because what little they do in the film is superficial at best, and not having them there really sucks the soul of the film completely dry because these characters are why The Hobbit should have been adapted in the first place. Then we have Kili (Aidan Turner), Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) in cinematic history’s least compelling love triangle. It actually takes up quite a decent portion of this film and oh boy does it suck. It’s so bad that Kili’s death is actually given more emotional weight to it than Thorin’s, despite the fact that Thorin and Bilbo were the driving force of the entire film.
Then there’s all of the awful, and I mean atrociously bad CGI. Almost the entire film is entirely CGI and it looks genuinely terrible, I mean, just look at what they did to poor Billy Connelly!
Long story short, because I’m not wasting any more time explaining why this film is awful, don’t watch it. Or maybe watch the first and last ten minutes and that’ll be good enough if you’re absolutely desperate to watch the entire Hobbit trilogy.
So how did The Hobbit trilogy ruin lives? I don’t mean the lives of all the fans who watched the films and had such an iconic piece of literature practically burned in front of them. What I mean is what happened in New Zealand during the making of these films?
So, just to get you up to speed. The Hobbit film adaptation started life as two films directed by Guillermo Del Toro with Peter Jackson on board as producer. After eighteen months of pre-production Del Toro quit because he felt it was taking too long. Then Warner Bros. and the other studio executives turned to Jackson and gave him an ultimatum, direct the films or leave the project and it will be filmed in Europe. Not wanting to lose jobs for thousands of Kiwi’s, Jackson took the helm. That’s the key part to what I mean when The Hobbit trilogy, and the Middle Earth franchise at large ruined lives, and it all became clear with what happened next.
Once production was due to begin on An Unexpected Journey there were mass strikes within the film and television industry with workers from all backgrounds in multiple countries demanding better pay and benefits. New Zealand in particular suffered from low wages and exploitation because of the lack of any true unions, so they banded up with other unions to make a statement, with The Hobbit being put under the spotlight because it was due to start production. As far as New Zealand citizens and workers were concerned they had it in the bag because they felt that Middle Earth was so synonymous with the country that it simply couldn’t be made anywhere else. Meanwhile Peter Jackson, being one of the country’s most successful filmmakers, understood that if the crew caused that much of a fuss the studio would just pack up and go elsewhere because it wasn’t worth the amount of money they would lose.
This fear of Jackson’s became public knowledge and eventually worked its way into government, with the Prime Minister of New Zealand calling a meeting with Warner Bros. to discuss terms for The Hobbit and any future WB productions made in the country. The result was that a law was passed meaning that entertainment workers could not take industrial action if they felt they were being exploited, and that WB was given millions in tax relief for all future productions they made in New Zealand in the hopes of having the studio make more films there. The government claimed this would invigorate the NZ film industry as more international productions would be willing to film in the country, but in reality, it meant that workers could be exploited for their labour, and that local creators would be less likely to receive funding because all of the money would be going to international projects. In essence, Warner Bros. and by extension The Hobbit killed the New Zealand film industry. Now of course it’s not entirely dead because there have been a small number of Kiwi creators able to get enough funding for films and the country is still a hotspot for international productions…but the sad truth behind it is that the competition is tougher than ever and the Kiwi’s that do work in film and television are often being paid substantially less than people who do the exact same job anywhere else in the world.
So, just to get you up to speed. The Hobbit film adaptation started life as two films directed by Guillermo Del Toro with Peter Jackson on board as producer. After eighteen months of pre-production Del Toro quit because he felt it was taking too long. Then Warner Bros. and the other studio executives turned to Jackson and gave him an ultimatum, direct the films or leave the project and it will be filmed in Europe. Not wanting to lose jobs for thousands of Kiwi’s, Jackson took the helm. That’s the key part to what I mean when The Hobbit trilogy, and the Middle Earth franchise at large ruined lives, and it all became clear with what happened next.
Once production was due to begin on An Unexpected Journey there were mass strikes within the film and television industry with workers from all backgrounds in multiple countries demanding better pay and benefits. New Zealand in particular suffered from low wages and exploitation because of the lack of any true unions, so they banded up with other unions to make a statement, with The Hobbit being put under the spotlight because it was due to start production. As far as New Zealand citizens and workers were concerned they had it in the bag because they felt that Middle Earth was so synonymous with the country that it simply couldn’t be made anywhere else. Meanwhile Peter Jackson, being one of the country’s most successful filmmakers, understood that if the crew caused that much of a fuss the studio would just pack up and go elsewhere because it wasn’t worth the amount of money they would lose.
This fear of Jackson’s became public knowledge and eventually worked its way into government, with the Prime Minister of New Zealand calling a meeting with Warner Bros. to discuss terms for The Hobbit and any future WB productions made in the country. The result was that a law was passed meaning that entertainment workers could not take industrial action if they felt they were being exploited, and that WB was given millions in tax relief for all future productions they made in New Zealand in the hopes of having the studio make more films there. The government claimed this would invigorate the NZ film industry as more international productions would be willing to film in the country, but in reality, it meant that workers could be exploited for their labour, and that local creators would be less likely to receive funding because all of the money would be going to international projects. In essence, Warner Bros. and by extension The Hobbit killed the New Zealand film industry. Now of course it’s not entirely dead because there have been a small number of Kiwi creators able to get enough funding for films and the country is still a hotspot for international productions…but the sad truth behind it is that the competition is tougher than ever and the Kiwi’s that do work in film and television are often being paid substantially less than people who do the exact same job anywhere else in the world.
Is it right for me to hold this real-world injustice against the quality of a film? I after all do advocate for the separation of art and artist as much as possible. But it’s kind of hard when you watch something with the knowledge that the majority of the people who worked on this extravagant blockbuster production were being exploited and find it difficult to make ends meet financially. It’s not a problem with The Battle of the Five Armies specifically, but I felt it was appropriate to bring it up here because of what the film represents for the Middle Earth franchise. A totally misguided cash grab at the cost of everyone involved.
It's a shame that The Battle of the Five Armies exists to begin with, and even more of a shame that The Hobbit trilogy ended up this way. It’s also difficult for it not to taint the original Lord of the Rings trilogy because of how intrinsically linked it is (both trilogies were made largely by the exact same creative team). Despite my adoration for the world of Middle Earth, I like to try and forget these films even exist, and I suggest you do too.
It's a shame that The Battle of the Five Armies exists to begin with, and even more of a shame that The Hobbit trilogy ended up this way. It’s also difficult for it not to taint the original Lord of the Rings trilogy because of how intrinsically linked it is (both trilogies were made largely by the exact same creative team). Despite my adoration for the world of Middle Earth, I like to try and forget these films even exist, and I suggest you do too.