Butler's Cinema Scene

Martin Freeman as Bilbo (left), and Richards Armitage as Thorin (right)

“THE HOBBIT: BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES” My rating: C 

144 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I am so over Peter Jackson’s Tolkein obsession.

It’s not that “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” is incompetent filmmaking. Rather, it’s empty filmmaking.

It’s got plenty of spectacle — beginning with a dragon and ending with an hour of uninterrupted combat — but it seems not to be inhabited. The characters are paper thin, and even those with whom we’ve developed some an affinity aren’t on the screen enough for genuine emotions to emerge.

Maybe this is what comes of taking a simple children’s adventure and ballooning it into a 9-hour trilogy.

Perhaps Jackson long ago emptied his quiver of tricks and is now reduced to repeating himself.

And the stuff that once wowed us — the CG that made the original Ring Trilogy such a technological marvel — now seems rather old hat.  So many of the effects on display here look patently artificial rather than real.

For hardcore fans, of course, none of this matters.  Having invested at least 15 hours in the first five Tolkein-inspired films, they’re not about to bail on the big conclusion. They’d probably stick around to watch Bilbo read from the White Pages.

Basically “Battle of the Five Armies” can be broken down into three segments.

First there’s the fiery destruction of Laketown by the dragon Smaug (voiced once again by Benedict Cumberbatch), with the reign of terror being ended by the boatman Bard (Luke Evans) and his big, harpoonish arrow.

In the central portion, Bard and the other Laketown survivors converge on the Lonely Mountain, hoping to find shelter in the ancient halls now occupied by Thorin (Richard Armitage), his band of dwarves, and Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the Hobbit of the  title.

Once in possession of the late Smaug’s vast warehouse of gold and jewels, though, Thorin goes all “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”  Driven mad by his newfound wealth, he gets greedy, denying sanctuary to the human fugitives  and nursing suspicions about the loyalties of his own men.

It all comes to a head in the final hour, when an elvish army led by Thranduil (Lee Pace) and the humans under Bard prepare to lay siege to the mountain stronghold.  Things get further complicated when a huge dwarf army under Dain (Billy Connolly) shows up in support of the paranoid Thorin.

Evangeline Lily

But then everyone is threatened by the arrival of not one but two orc armies, leading to an epic smackdown. Bilbo, who is underutilized this time around, becomes a sort of peacemaker who unites the civilized Middle Earth races against the orcs.

A few things work here. The tentative romance between the elf warrior woman Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) and the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) offers a few moments of wistful longing. Ken Stott’s Balin remains the most personable of the largely interchangeable dwarves.

And of course there are reprise appearances by series regulars such as Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm and Hugo Weaving.

But “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” isn’t all that exciting.  It’s perfunctory.

| Robert W. Butler