new to DVD: The Hobbit: The Battle of the 5 Armies

One of my favorite books of all time is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it tells the tale of a cute, innocent little creature who, to his surprise, is recruited to join a group of dwarves on a mostly light-hearted adventure across a fantasy landscape. Yes, Bilbo Baggins, the title character, often finds his life in danger -- it is supposed to be an adventure after all -- but this is a book well suited for children. As a child, I fell in love with this book, as many before me have as well.

Tolkien later wrote a sequel, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although the two stories are directly related in their continuity, even sharing a couple of the same characters, they are remarkably different in length, tone, and, I suspect, intended audience.

Filmmaker Peter Jackson doesn't seem to understand any of this. His three-part cinematic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has been hailed as a masterpiece, and for the most part, I am not inclined to disagree; regardless of whether or not Jackson's version of Rings fits my personal taste, or yours, for that matter, there is no denying that, at least in terms of sheer scope, Jackson's accomplishment is phenomenal. But here's the thing: whereas it made sense to turn Tolkien's Rings trilogy of epics into a trilogy of epic films, the logic falls apart when he also adapts The Hobbit into a trilogy of epic films. The Hobbit, as a book, is epic in neither length nor scope, nor was it intended to be. As a result of Jackson's desperate attempt to duplicate his earlier success, his adaptation of The Hobbit ends up being true to neither the letter nor the spirit of Tolkien's book.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the final film, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Here, Jackson takes one chapter from a relatively short book, and stretches it into a two-and-a-half hour movie. If Jackson's Lord of the Rings films were exercises in excess, the very concept, let alone the execution, of making an epic film out of a single scene from Tolkien's book is an exercise in excess to the Nth degree.

Now, perhaps you are wondering, "but Movie Man, if this whole movie really is based on just one chapter of a short book, where does Jackson get enough material to stretch it out into more than two hours?" Well, dear readers, Jackson heavily relies on two methods. First, he includes a bunch of stuff that just plain doesn't belong. This includes several references to the events in The Lord of the Rings. No doubt Jackson and his co-writers thought this was clever, as such references serve as both call-back (in terms of order of the the films' release) and foreshadowing (in terms of the story's chronology). Jackson also includes several scenes involving the internal politics of both Laketown and the elven royal family, as well as a sappy love triangle between one of Bilbo's dwarven friends, a female elven warrior named Tauriel, and her would-be lover, the elf prince Legolas. Note that the adventures of Legolas and Tauriel get a lot of screen time, even though neither of them ever appear in Tolkien's book! Jackson, in his pointless desperation to needlessly stretch out the running time, just randomly added these two characters out of the blue! It would all be justifiable, I suppose, if the characters of Legolas and Tauriel added something to the film besides running time, but they really don't; their scenes add nothing of value to either the narrative nor the themes of the story, and each of their scenes seem jarringly out of place.

Speaking of scenes that are out of place, let's briefly address the lengthy opening sequence, in which the dragon Smaug attacks the fishing village of Laketown. This scene, unlike the scenes with Legolas, Tauriel, and all the talk of future portents, at least comes from Tolkien's book, but the entire sequence also so clearly belongs in the previous movie, that that movie was actually named for this scene; viewers of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug sat through two hours of characters talking about the horrible, terrible, powerful, infamous dragon Smaug, but that movie ended exactly just before Smaug actually got to desolate anything. I can't help but wonder if anybody threw their remaining popcorn at the movie screens in frustration.

Here, in the very beginning of The Battle of the Five Armies, Smaug finally gets to desolate something. Visually, the entire sequence is spectacular. But does it belong in this film? It's so sloppily tacked on to the beginning of the movie that Jackson doesn't even try to set the stage. It seems to pick up at the very second where the previous movie left off, and if that sounds cool, it's really, really not. Think about how movies begin. There are many ways to begin a movie, even in the middle of actions and storylines that have already been set into motion, but Jackson doesn't even bother to acknowledge that the movie is beginning. It's so jarring, you feel like you should try to rewind the DVD to see what you missed.

Oh yeah, earlier, I said that Jackson had two methods for stretching out a single book chapter into an entire epic film, and so far, I have addressed only one, adding Stuff That Doesn't Belong. Jackson's other method won't surprise anyone familiar with Jackson's previous work: Remember how each of the Lord of the Rings movies over-emphasized the battle scenes? Oh, come on. Even if you like the movies, you have to admit that the battle scenes went on for a long time. Armies would fight for twenty minutes of screen time, and just when it looked like one side would win, reinforcements for the other side arrive. Well, one look at the title of The Battle of the Five Armies should give you an idea of Jackon's strategy this time around.

But wait a minute. We've got the desolation of Smaug (in the wrong movie, but still, we've got it), we've got elven and human politics, we've got the ridiculous love triangle between Kili, Tauriel, and Legolas, and we've got well over an hour's worth of pure battle footage. But where does the title character fit into all of this? What of the Hobbit? Tolkien's book was aptly titled, as Bilbo constantly remained the main character, one we could root for. Here, he disappears for long, long stretches of time as Jackson busies himself with all of the distractions he's added and over-emphasized. This is supposed to be Bilbo's story. It no longer is. I'm not really sure who this new version of the story is for. For people who like to see armies and fantasy creatures fight each other, I guess. Those people will love this movie.