The saga of The Hobbit at the cinema is, at last, complete. Utilizing the same production team that filmed the highly praised Lord of the Rings trilogy, director and screenwriter Peter Jackson did everything possible to make his Hobbit trilogy equal if not supplant his earlier work. Despite the obvious care and talent employed in the production, though, this "prequel" set of movies failed to justify its length or breadth. The final chapter (in theatres now) feels ever so much like a gratuitous victory lap.
While Jackson took risks with his earlier trilogy, daring to stake out his own artistic vision in Tolkien's story (including controversial choices that I don't fully agree with), the Hobbit movies play as a regurgitation of what's come before. Anyone who watched the Lord of the Rings knew exactly what would happen in the Hobbit trilogy: battles, intrigue, wounded love, and more battles. There was barely a moment where I felt something fresh in the wind to lighten the burden of a series bloated beyond its own sense of direction or purpose.
This conclusion is especially depressing given the promise the first chapter held. Martin Freeman was an inspired bit of casting as Bilbo Baggins, and the entire artistic team did themselves proud with the many visual flourishes required by movies of this magnitude. I loved some of the new themes Howard Shore developed (my reaction to the first teaser was: "Hurrah for singing dwarvers!") While I could have done without the overriding Orc vendetta plot fleshed out by Jackson, his handling of the White Council in An Unexpected Journey was intriguing and hinted that we were finally going to get more glimpses of these great ones at work. I for one was all set to see the Necromancer battled in The Desolation of Smaug.
Unfortunately that's where things started to go off the rails, not simply in terms of adaptation but also good directing. I found Two Towers to be the weakest adaptation of the three LOTR movies due to the liberties Jackson took with the source material. Yet taken on its own, without reference to the book, the movie holds up very well. The changes created a very different message and story, but it was a strong vision that Jackson managed to connect with the climax of his trilogy. When he departed, he did so in big, bold, even beautiful ways.
There are so many moments in Smaug where Jackson could have stretched in the same amazing way, reshaping cannon to fit some grand scheme. Mirkwood is a very different environment than any witnessed before, and yet the sequences wandering in the forest were rushed through in order to offer more trumped up battles. Rather than allowing us time to focus on the characters we'd grown to know and enjoy in Journey, much of the elven hall sequences are devoted to new characters, new dilemmas, and yet none are given nearly enough depth to draw our sympathies.
Compare the two middle chapter additions of Théoden, King of Rohan, and Thranduil, King of the Woodland Elves. One is given the sense of dignity and pathos needed to bring us to tears at his death in the final battle; the other barely draws more than a few cheap grins at his antics and then some eyerolls when Jackson attempts to pad out his character in the final moments. Or imagine if instead of all the wonderful sequences between Sam, Frodo, and Gollum we get in both Two Towers and Return of the King (moments that include some delightful bits of humor and establish the growing bonds between these characters), these three were upstaged by Éowyn in shots that exploited her as a characterless killer rather than a wise leader and skilled adversary.
Ironically enough, I found the best moments of The Desolation of Smaug to occur in Laketown. Here the imaginative forays of the LOTR movies felt alive again, with the levels upon levels of detail shown in even the most cursory of shots. The setting and its denizens were so different from anything seen before, not concerned whatsoever with the outside world or its problems. Even the music picked up here, as we finally got an interesting new theme and several characters that instantly pulled me into their stories.
Alas, we're not allowed to spend much time in an enviorn with so much promise, as the characters are practically shoved out of the town nearly as soon as they enter. Then it's off to the dragon, where after a very abbreviated form of the battle of wits between Bilbo and Smaug we're presented with yet another action scene, full of sound and fury and signifying very little. For a movie named after him, Smaug himself is given very little to do. It's a shame, since Benedict Cumberbatch gives the scanty material his very best. His other voice talent in the piece, the Necromancer, suffers even worse: for all the buildup of two movies, we're never even treated to an actual interaction with this mysterious figure. Instead, his brief skirmish with Gandalf is merely a tease for the final movie.
With a dragon to be slain and a dark lord to be fought, not to mention the resolution of a love triangle and an army of orcs, The Battle of the Five Armies would seem to have quite enough to fill out its nearly three hour running time. Instead, there's a strange series of stops and starts, as if no one was quite sure what the climax was anymore or how to build to it. Smaug is done away with in a dramatically satisfying way, but it occurs so early in the final film's narrative that it feels almost as if the end has happened before the beginning.
Then there's a lot of standing around and waiting for the battle to start, which instead of giving us more time with Bilbo and the dwarves is focused on everything but our supposed heroes. Each of the various plot threads venture farther and farther apart, to the point that it no longer feels as if we're watching one but rather multiple movies. There's no unifying factor to rally behind, nothing to continually draw everything back into perspective. The battle with the Necromancer finally occurs (and provides one of the few high points of the film), but is dispatched at a point where it really proves to have no relation to what's occurring elsewhere. The Elves are never shown to have much motivation in their actions (whether for love or money).
Oddly enough, even the moments we share with Bilbo and his band are robbed of much of their dialogue, creating long stretches where characters simply stare at each or out into space. Jackson was clever enough to actually give us Gollum's schizophrenic conversations without them coming across as cartoonish or confusing: Bilbo's perpetual scowl in Five Armies merely feels muddled. I'd much rather he voice his concerns out loud, even to himself.
Worse, Five Armies looks rushed, with multiple points feeling like a second or third edit rather than a final version. Why do we see Thranduil command his sentries to shoot anything they see leaving the mountain in one scene, followed by a shot of Bilbo hopping down and into the camp sans the Ring's invisibility? Why was the matter of Bard's potential rise to King raised at a pivotal moment, only to fade away without mention later? Why were there so many moments that the special effects felt, well, effected, and how on earth did this trilogy end with not a single party or celebration to mark the end? I know people complained about the multiple endings for Return of the King, but those were imminently preferable to the noneding we got for our trouble of following this particular Hobbit.
There are a few sparks of wonder left at the end, a few moments that bring forth some semblance of vision, but it's all clouded by lack of focus and direction. Things happen without rhyme or reason solely to set up the next stunt, the next shot, the next spectacle. Since the titular battle of the last film only lasts one day (and over half of it is not recounted by Tolkien, who chooses to allow his narrator Bilbo Baggins to miss the majority of the action), Jackson was forced to stretch out a paltry sum of pages into a two plus hour extravaganza, and yet still cut bits from the text to do it.
What's missing from this Hobbit's journey, at the end of a very long trip? Resolution and catharsis, the essence of good drama, even of the abstract kind. This trilogy plays it safe by sticking to what it knows how to do: slay things and shoot big sequences of movement. There's little to no stretch here, no moment in the last movie that made me take note and really care for anyone or anything. I actually found myself wishing it would hurry along in places and get to the point.
Not to mention, there was no further singing ever again after the inspired Song of the Misty Mountain, even a reprise (perhaps at Thorin's funeral, sung as dirge? Oh, again, the lost possibilities!) If there's anything that would have made this trilogy worth the time involved, it would be a little more poetry in its soul.
