The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies review

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Aidan Turner, Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellen, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Manu Bennett, Cate Blanchett, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, Ken Stott, Billy Connolly, Ryan Gage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Adam Brown, Sylvester McCoy, Mikael Persbrandt

It’s no secret that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy hasn’t received quite the adulation as his Lord of the Rings films which this succeeds. An Unexpected Journey in particular has a mass of critics who may well have just been baying for blood. The stage was set for a grand action packed finale to redeem the perhaps slow-building preludes of the previous films. Is this the glory of Return of the King once more?

With Smaug’s (Cumberbatch’s) awakening destroying Lake-Town, Bilbo (Freeman) is caught in the crossfire of men, led by Bard (Evans), and Elves, led by Thranduil (Pace), seeking to claim some of the dwarves’ regained wealth. However, the new king beneath the mountain, Thorin (Armitage), is less willing to dispense of his riches while Gandalf (McKellen) learns of a legion of Orcs similarly converging on Erebor.

This unexpected third instalment was only confirmed mid-2012 and it’s sadly evident that this entire trilogy has been scrapped to a finish. The “trilogy-effect” takes its toll the most here; the scattershot narrative is elongated and overstuffed with some utterly pointless plot threads. Resident cheat Alfrid gets a ridiculous amount of screentime without ever contributing anything of significance. Bard remains one of the few grounded and plausible heroes of the bunch but the human characters are by far the least interesting around.

Thankfully the most human of all the characters keep up their brilliant dynamic. Freeman’s Bilbo and McKellen’s Gandalf only have rare moments together but their own performances are pitch perfect. The surprise hit this time round is Richard Armitage’s Thorin. The king beneath the mountain’s reign becomes plagued by dragon sickness in a borderline terrifying transformation for our once hero.

Although lacking the comic spark of his duo with John Rhys Davis, Orlando Bloom is still fairly entertaining as action-Elf Legolas but there ought to have been more of a set up for the character that we meet sixty years later. Even Bilbo hasn’t become the madcap adventurer that we come to know him as. Five Armies sets up for the world of LOTR but not the people.

Even with the shortest runtime yet, this has by far the most filler space of all the series but at least some of Jackson’s invention in the narrative works successfully. In DoS the Kili-Tauriel-Legolas love triangle felt forced but here it fuels a personal level to the later action scenes. The White Council’s misadventures in Dol Goldur greatly help to develop the LOTR links and the overall shared universe feel.

That latter sequence ends disappointingly early with Sauron’s bizarre acid rock light display replacing potential scenes depicting Saruman’s corruption. That may well have been set aside to focus on the main battle’s development. Each faction’s motives, characters and power are quickly established but swept aside at the arrival of the orcs.

What The Hobbit lost in successful narrative structure it more than gained in visual brilliance. Peter Jackson is at his most David-Lean like in this instalment and all the performances are exactly on point. It may be more of a fizzle out than the big bang we wanted to end the series but is still a worthy entry to both fantasy perfection and cinematic history.

8/10

“I am glad to have shared in your perils. Each and every one of them. It is far more than any Baggins deserves!”

Zack Snyder talks Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman and Hobbit 3 rumours title change

We’ve known for a while that the third film of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings prequel trilogy, following An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit is set to be subtitled There and Back Again but the usually reliable fan site The One Ring claims that change is afoot. It’s rumoured that a new title is being considered by Jackson and New Line – The Hobbit: Into the Fire. As well as a neat reference to Smaug, Tolkien fans and those with a good memory will recall the book’s chapter and the film’s line “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” as its source. As cool as this sounds, I think There and Back Again better demonstrates the completion of Bilbo’s adventures and our time in Middle Earth.

Whatever it gets called, it’ll come out this Christmas and will star Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Manu Bennett, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ryan Gage, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Billy Connolly, Mikael Persbrandt, Lawrence Makoare, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch and Christopher Lee alongside the Dwarves, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kirchir, Stephen Hunter, Peter Hambleton, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Mark Hadlow and Richard Armitage.

Man of Steel caused a strong reaction upon its 2013 summer release: some (including us) loved the hard hitting action and emotional involvement but others found it a head-bangingly loud fanfare, which it arguably is. It still brought in huge box office figures bringing in just shy of $700 million and becoming the 9th highest grossing film of the year. Its director, 300 and Watchmen’s Zack Snyder, is busy at work on the yet untitled sequel but he’s taken some time out to tell us about his plans for DC’s future.

“After Man Of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman. In the first meeting, it was like, ‘Maybe Batman?’ Maybe at the end of the second movie, some Kryptonite gets delivered to Bruce Wayne’s house or something. Like in a cryptic way, that’s the first time we see him.”

“But then, once you say it out loud, right? You’re in a story meeting talking about, like, who should Superman fight if he fought this giant alien threat Zod who was basically his equal physically, from his planet, fighting on our turf. You know, who to fight next? But I’m not going to say at all that when I took the job to do Man Of Steel that I did it in a subversive way to get to Batman. I really believe that only after contemplating who could face Superman did Batman come into the picture.”

“The thing also that’s really fascinating for me is that, even just in the tests we’ve been doing, the costumes, right? You basically have Batman and Superman — and this is without Ben (Affleck – above in Argo) and Henry (Cavill) in the costumes, but just like the stand-ins, just testing to see what the costumes look like. And you have them standing there and they’re standing in the same shot — and then we have Wonder Woman, you know, all three of them in the same shot. Even just for a test, you really have to go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy!’ Not only is it the first time that I’m seeing them, it’s the first time they’ve ever existed together on screen in a movie. Even just Batman and Superman standing next to each other. It’s kind of epic. It’s crazy. But it’s fun.”

The Man of Steel follow up will star Henry Cavill (Immortals, The Tudors), Ben Affleck (Argo, The Town), Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Master), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Now You See Me) Gal Gadot (Fast and Furious, Knight and Day), Jeremy Irons (The Lion King, Dead Ringers) Holly Hunter (The Piano, The Incredibles), Callan Mulvey (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 300: Rise of an Empire), Tao Okamoto (The Wolverine) and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Apocalypse Now).

Batman vs Superman – May 6th 2016

The Hobbit: There and Back Again – December 12th

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug review

Director: Peter Jackson

Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner, Evangeline Lilly, Ian McKellen, Ken Stott Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Lee Pace, Graham McTavish, Stephen Fry, Manu Bennett, Lawrence Makoare, Ryan Gage, John Bell, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Stephen Hunter, Sylvester McCoy, Mikael Persbrandt

Love or or hate it, An Unexpected Journey was not to the standard of The Lord of the Rings, the trilogy that The Hobbit was a prequel to. Now, The Desolation of Smaug has arrived and it’s not faultless but I’d happily class this as a return to Rings’ form for Peter Jackson.

The worst is not behind the company as former fish Hobbit-out-of-water Shire Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) once thought. The wizard Gandalf (McKellen) convinces himself to investigate the medlings of the dark Necromancer (Cumberbatch) in Dol Goldur and so leaves the group to face giant spiders and much worse, ie the merciless elf king Thranduil (Pace) and his son Legolas (Bloom), in the forests of Mirkwood. Meanwhile, new Orc on the block Bolg (Makoare) is on the track of the dwarves and Thorin’s (Armitage) desperation leads to a risky deal with a crooked mayor (Fry) and sending Bilbo into an uncertain meeting with the “dormant” dragon Smaug (Cumberbatch…again).

The Desolation of Smaug contains some of the grimmest moments that there’s been in Lord of the Rings/Hobbit franchise. Jackson really is honouring his horror roots with the terrifying spider sequence (it isn’t ripping off the one in Return of the King so don’t worry) but perhaps one to many decapitations. Some oppose it but the lighter moments, however ridiculous, are necessary to balance the terror for what’s essentially a kids movie.

The key advantage of Desolation is the fact that it can just get going into the action after a shady and brief entrance unlike the sluggish opening of An Unexpected Journey. We can get invested into the action almost immediately. The barrel chase is certainly the best set piece of the year but this time around the characters seem to be in no short supply of charm. This second instalment has built a palette of lovable characters; I can easily see Bard (Evans) and Kili (Aidan Turner) quickly becoming fan favourites!

There are quite a few setbacks. Both Lee Pace and Orlando Bloom failed to be engaging in any way, I think all of their lines are in the trailers. Despite still being billed as the lead star, Ian McKellen’s Gandalf has barely any screen time in this film and so his apparent chemistry with Freeman’s Bilbo is therefore non existent. Both Bard and Thorin are owed more lines and there’s a couple of scenes with fairly taccy CG.

All can be forgiven with the sheer terror of Smaug however. Cumberbatch voice work here surpasses his own “John Harrison” to become the villain of the year and possibly the highest quality CG there’s been in an on screen monster. In a way, his immense scale multiplies Bilbo’s courage as Martin Freeman once again delivers a spot on, and fresh, ordinary-guy-turned-hero character performance we’ve seen done wrong too many times.

The Desolation of Smaug has some of the most exciting action there’s been in a fantasy film for a few years. Generally, the performances of those who actually get decently sized roles are brilliant and it’s got some of the great oddball comedy moments of this year. There’s about ten minutes of footage I’d rather see in the extended editions but, as soon as you can except some of the ridiculous elements, you can enjoy the best adventure film there’s been in a while. This trilogy was never going to be quite as good as The Lord of the Rings but, as long as There and Back Again gets back into the action instantly, it will still be a huge fantasy spectacle.

9/10

“Truly the songs and tales fall utterly short of your enormity, oh Smaug the stupendous!”