If you see the names Thranduil, Tauriel, Azog, and Thorin Oakenshield, and you know instantly who they are and how they fit into Middle Earth, then you are probably ready for the third part of the “Hobbit” trilogy.
If you can’t place the names, please consider re-watching the first two films and probably the entire “Lord of the Rings” box set as well. Because it’s going to get very thick around here.
Peter Jackson’s crowded final film of the J.R.R. Tolkien universe is “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” and it begins in mid-breath. Fiery breath: The flying dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) was loosed at the end of Part Two, and his flaming rampage is in full swing as “Five Armies” commences.
With no memory-refreshing from the previous chapters, we launch into a dozen or so plotlines: all those names and all those creatures, plus cameo appearances from “LOTR” cast members (“The Hobbit” takes place years before the “LOTR” saga). The 3-D hubbub renders nominal hero Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) a team player rather than true protagonist.
The second half of the picture is overwhelmed by a giant battle (there may be five armies involved, but I’m a little vague on that), which ping-pongs between thousands of computer-generated soldiers and clever hand-to-hand combat involving the principals.
Jackson is as resourceful as ever at exploiting cool locations — crumbling bridges and iced-over lakes — for cartoony stunts. When pointy-eared archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) climbs a set of collapsing stairs, we see how much more Jackson delights in pratfalls over carnage.
Such ingenuity is at the service of a project that lost its emotional core when Jackson decided to take Tolkien’s relatively streamlined novel and pump it up into three plus-sized movies. (“Five Armies” is the shortest of the bunch, at 144 minutes.)
It’s still pleasant to see Bilbo in company of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), but the rest of the cast hasn’t taken up the slack. Richard Armitage, as corruptible dwarf leader Thorin, and Evangeline Lilly and Aidan Turner as star-crossed lovers (an elf and a dwarf — it can never work), do not match the charismatic ensemble of “The Lord of the Rings.”
That terrifically entertaining trilogy looms especially large in this installment of “The Hobbit”: Jackson takes time for multiple foreshadowings of his 2001-2003 epic, which only underscores the suspicion that the “Hobbit” movies constitute a very long prelude to the main event.
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” ??1/2
Peter Jackson brings his latest J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy to a conclusion, as Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) gets lost amid the armies of elves, dwarves, and orcs. Jackson’s talent for cartoony jokes is still intact, but the thread of the story is overwhelmed by the action, and by the many foreshadowings of “The Lord of the Rings.”
Rating: PG-13, for violence
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