Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in the last part of Peter Jackson's Hobbit adaptation.
J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings was once thought to be an unflimable novel. The movie rights to the story were sold shortly before Tolkien's death in 1973 and various studios and productions would struggle with trying to keep the complexity of themes, as well as the sheer number of characters, while at the same time trying to condense
The Lord of the Rings to an acceptable length. And even though there were
animated adaptations like Ralph Bakshi's, in the end it took more than three decades for a live-action movie to be released. Even though there is some dissent within the fanbase as to how well the films capture the story, Peter Jackson's
Rings trilogy was a critical and financial success, winning 17 Academy Awards.
The Return of the King was the first and only fantasy film to win a best picture Oscar.
However, the current Hobbit trilogy has been much more divisive, with some comparing them to George Lucas's Star Wars prequel trilogy. Originally intended to be two movies directed by Guillermo del Toro, lawsuits and production delays resulted in the expansion of the number of Hobbit movies to three and Jackson back in the director's chair. The decision to expand The Hobbit into a trilogy has always been a bit controversial, since the novel is only a 384-page book. If The Lord of the Rings presented a problem of how to create a cohesive narrative on screen with so much material, The Hobbit movies have to borrow from appendices, extrapolate situations hinted at by Tolkien and wholesale invent new characters and bits of story in order to fill out their running lengths.
There has been speculation as to whether The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will be Jackson's final foray into Tolkien's material, but as of now this is the culmination of six films, 13 years of work and over a thousand minutes of accumulated running time. And like The Return of the King, the movie ends its trilogy on a 144-minute, action-dominated note that is visually spectacular. But it is not nearly as an emotionally satisfying conclusion as The Return of the King, and suffers from trying to stretch 30 minutes of story out over two hours.
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The best way I can encapsulate this review is that the movie exemplifies everything that people both love and hate about Jackson's
Rings films. To some, it will be another proof that Jackson doesn't "get" what Tolkien's story is about, and is a glorified video game with computer-generated Orcs, elves, dwarves, etc., fighting over computer-generated gold in a computer-generated background with bits of New Zealand geography. For others, it will be another example of how well Jackson has imagined Tolkien's world and visualized it through marvels of technical innovation and visual imagery.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Where The Return of the King would work as a movie that could stand on its own, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the third act of a story that is very beautiful to look at but suffers in not really having a definable arc for its characters.
Five Armies picks up where The Desolation of Smaug ended, with Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) beginning his siege of Lake-town. Fire and brimstone rain, buildings burn and innocents die. Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) has led the elves in coming to the rescue of Lake-town’s refugees, who've been abandoned by their Master (Stephen Fry). But the elves and dwarves are soon fighting over Smaug's gold. In the backdrop, the elf Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) pontificate about the implications while Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) struggles to break free and warn the others about the orcs marching towards them. And in the end, orcs, humans, goblins, and others begin converging for a battle, each asserting a claim to the "gold beyond grief and sorrow." The events of this significant battle set the stage for the events of The Lord of the Rings, which allows the movie to give shout-outs to fan favorites like Legolas (Orlando Bloom). And while all of that is happening, the elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) is in love with a dwarf, Kili (Aidan Turner), making them something of a Romeo and Juliet of Middle-earth.
The star of this movie is not really Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). If anything, it's Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), since Thorin is the only character that experiences anything close to growth in the movie. But the arc is not really all that original and you can guess where it's going and how it's going to end from moment one.
Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins holding the One Ring.
While there is something to be said about a 45-minute battle sequence in an adaptation of an anti-war children’s book, the battles are masterfully created and full of moments where you'll say "wow." And to be clear, this movie is basically two hours of Jackson trying to provide those moments. But where
The Return of the King encompassed those "wow" moments in a story that provided emotional resonance to the action, there just isn't the same weight to the action this time. All of this is not to say
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is a bad movie. It's not. But the problems in characterization and stretching the story into an overstuffed three-parter inhibit how well the pieces work together. At times, the characters feel incredibly one-dimensional, with no other purpose or desires than what the plot demands. And yet, Jackson does make you care about their fates in how well he sells that singularity of purpose and whether they'll make it "there and back again."
Is this the end? Could Peter Jackson do more Lord of the Rings movies? Ian McKellen thinks it's possible.
Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel.
The most likely candidate for adaptation would be
The Silmarillion. However, there are many, many issues with Jackson, or anyone else, going down that path. If
The Lord of the Rings and
The Hobbit were problematic to adapt, the issues with
The Silmarillion are about 10 times worse. Written by Tolkien, posthumously edited by his son, Christopher, and published in 1977,
The Silmarillion is set mostly long before the events in
The Lord of the Rings, and functions as a foundation narrative. It begins with the creation of the universe, tells how Middle-earth formed, and recounts a history up to the first war against Sauron. But adapting it into a film, or even multiple films, would be messy. There's no real narrative through-line that connects all of the events, there are many characters that aren't exactly interconnected and they don't appear throughout it, and most of the events occur so far in the past that not many of the characters from either
The Hobbit or
The Lord of the Rings could appear in any adaptation of it.
Beyond the problems in adapting it, there's the issue that Christopher Tolkien controls the rights to The Silmarillion and he hates what Peter Jackson has done with his father's work. In addition, Tolkien's estate has feuded with Warner Bros. and Jackson over profits. Creative Hollywood accounting claims The Lord of the Rings films, which have grossed almost $5 billion worldwide, have not turned a profit, screwing the Tolkiens out of net revenues.
From Le Monde, July 9, 2012:
"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."
"They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."
Since these movies have been such financial successes, it seems unlikely the franchise will stay dormant, with or without Jackson's participation. The other option would be to remake the original
Lord of the Rings films.