Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy comes to a fitting and fighting end

DOES the final Hobbit movie stack up to those that came before it? James Wigney is among the first in the world to see it and he says yes.

AFTER six movies, 16 years, 17 Oscars, 17 hours and $5 billion (and counting) at the box office, Peter Jackson has left JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth in much the same manner he arrived – with one bloody big battle.

The opening scene of his first Lord Of the Rings movie showed elven and orc blades clashing and the forces of good and evil have squared off many times since for our cinematic pleasure, but the closing chapter of his Hobbit prequel trilogy may just have outdone them all in the fighting stakes.

In fact, The Battle Of the Five Armies, which had its star-studded world premiere in London on Monday night, is surely one of the biggest and boldest battles ever committed to film. And while at times it can become overwhelming there’s no doubt that the Kiwi director does it better than almost anyone else.

The final countdown ... Lee Pace as King Thranduil in The Hobbit: the Battle Of the Five Armies takes Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adventure home.

Fans of Jackson’s endlessly inventive and slightly fevered imagination will thrill to the sight of huge burrowing worms, head-butting trolls and giants, freakish bats, ranks of gleaming elven crack troops and certainly not least, the sight of a splendidly bewhiskered Billy Connolly riding an armoured pig clutching a giant hammer. But so long and intense is the final showdown (even though at 144 minutes it’s the shortest of all the films) that more casual viewers might feel a distinct sense of battle fatigue well before the final credits roll.

Still, given the title of the movie and Jackson’s by-now-established reputation as a master of war, it should come as no real surprise that the battle in question takes up such a huge chunk of the running time. And it’s undeniably impressive, with a scale and ambition that rather make the battles of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers and Pelennor Fields from The Return Of the King look like minor border skirmishes.

Dragon destruction ... Lake Town cops a blast in The Hobbit: the Battle Of the Five Armies.

Even if some of the scenes feel vaguely familiar, Jackson and his team at Weta Digital have put the leaps and bounds in special effects they helped pioneer to superb effect, dreaming up new beasts, new weapons, new strategies and new ways to showcase them. And with his sixth and final foray into Middle Earth, there is a sense that Jackson is still trying to top all that has come before. His ever more ambitious feats for Orlando Bloom’s elf warrior Legolas, which have included surfing down the trunk of a giant elephant-like creature and leaping from head to head of dwarves floating in barrels down rapids, literally reach new heights this time around.

With the first two Hobbit films, An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation Of Smaug, there was a feeling that the decision to spin Tolkien’s rather slender children’s story into a trilogy had resulted in more than a little padding. Plots and characters from other stories and appendices were borrowed, new characters were dreamed up and short passages spun out into, admittedly spectacular, action set pieces.

End of an era ... Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel in the final Hobbit movie.

While that nagging feeling remains that two movies might have sufficed, the story certainly never drags in The Battle Of the Five Armies. It gets off to a cracking start as the mighty dragon Smaug, awoken by the dwarves in the second film wreaks his fiery revenge on Lake Town, the destruction of which sets up a stand-off between the races of men, elves and the company of dwarves who have commandeered his vast treasure hoard as their birth right.

As the dwarf who would be king, Thorin Oakenshield, Richard Armitage gets to do most of the emotional heavy lifting. His descent into the greed-induced madness known as dragon sickness is as powerful as his eventual battlefield heroics when the armies unite to fight the attacking orc hordes, and build to a long-overdue icy smackdown with the giant orc Bolg.

Martin Freeman, as the titular hobbit adds a touch of steel to his quiet everyman charm, while the old guard of Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Hugo Weaving’s Elrond and Christopher Lee’s Saruman have a blast in a spooky scene that’s as thrilling as it is unexpected.

Jackson’s final Lord Of the Rings film, The Return Of the King, quite deservedly scored an equal record 11 Oscars when it was released more than ten years ago, including Best Picture and Best Director. It’s hard to see The Battle Of the Five Armies adding to the director’s personal golden horde, and his prequel trilogy has perhaps suffered by comparison to the first three films and the fact that audiences know where the story is going. But Jackson has long said he hopes in time the six movies will all be viewed together and enjoyed as part of one greater story and in that sense The Battle Of the Five Armies is a fitting farewell to a much loved cinema world and a master director’s vision.

Pay the ferryman ... Luke Evans as Bard the Bowman and Orlando Bloom as Legolas.

Originally published as Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy comes to a fitting and fighting end