Beware of spoilers!
I just got back from watching The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and while I was satisfied with the movie, there was an element missing that I would like to point out. If you haven't read my blog before, I'd like to say first off that I am a multi-fandom geek who is mostly into sci-fi (Trekker would probably be most accurate term), but I do dabble in fantasy as well and other geeky fandoms as well.
This blog is not a review on the film, but rather on the element that kept me riveted to The Hobbit trilogy. My history with Tolkien is a bit odd: I was raised by a Tolkien fan but I didn't have much interest in it, not even when the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released. I only became interested when I played the MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online and got to learn more about the history of Middle Earth through the quests. By the time The Hobbit was released, I was interested enough in the franchise to go see An Unexpected Journey without the promise of Orlando Bloom (so sue me, I was a teenager when the LOTR movies came out!).
Now that I've seen the final film, I can point out how the trilogy affected me. The film itself was well done, although I was left a little disappointed, and this is why: the dwarves.
That may sound a bit odd since the dwarves were the main characters along side the hobbit himself, Bilbo Baggins. The reason why I loved this franchise more the LOTR trilogy was all due to the 13 dwarves, and not just the Durin boys. The first film worked great for my tastes because, being an actress myself, I love seeing actors and actresses who are so obviously having fun (I wrote a blog on this subject so feel free to check it out) that it makes the film all the more enjoyable. It's pretty clear throughout The Hobbit trilogy that the actors playing the dwarves are enjoying their roles and having a good time.
Herein lies the element that was missing in the final film: the heart. The first film fleshed out the dwarves and gave them personalities that the book didn't; for example, Dori was more refined and Bofur likes to tease Bombur. I loved that these guys were more than just background characters; they were family, they were a team, and they all shared a genuine sense of adventure. Despite Bilbo being the main character, the dwarves brought the heart to the story. This element carried over into The Desolation of Smaug, even when the dwarves split up. They still had that heart, despite more story lines being added and the focus shifting to newer characters.
Now, with The Battle of the Five Armies, the focus shifts heavily to Thorin for the obvious reason of him being the king. After that, the only dwarves that received any serious screen time was Balin, Dwalin, Fili and Kili. The remaining 8 dwarves became the background characters like they were in the book and had few, if any, lines. Once the focus shifted away from the dwarves as a whole, the heart disappeared. We had instead the lingering sense of doom that would eventually come to Thorin, Fili and Kili. Their fate was supposed to break our hearts, which the film certainly did do, but that didn't mean it had to take from the rest of the dwarves.
The previous two films did such a wonderful job of giving the dwarves humanistic qualities besides being stereo-typically stubborn and drunk: the dwarves were loyal, mischievous, valiant, courageous, and honorable. After taking all that effort and screen time, to give 13 dwarves the essence of each one being important to the story and then keeping them in the background for the final chapter took the heart away from the story. Those 8 dwarves deserved better than that.
Hopefully the extended cut that will come out in late 2015 will offer a more satisfying story for the 8 dwarves and bring back at least some of the heart that was so prevalent in the first film, but the extended cut of Smaug didn't include the scene where Bofur drunk himself under the table (which I'm STILL mad about), so my hopes aren't that high. Although it will be disappointing if the heart doesn't appear in the extended cut, it will make sense since Five Armies is, in fact, a war film.
In the meantime, for a brief review, I did enjoy this last film; the first 20 minutes were epic with Smaug's demise and Elrond just being awesome. The rest of the film was good as well, although it seemed to lack a harmonious flow; the different stories seemed to be intercut oddly with notable gaps and a bit too much focus on Alfrid. Seriously, we could've used more dwarves and less Alfrid; he was a plot device that was used well beyond what was needed. Ultimately, with the exception of the lack of heart, it brought a satisfying end to the trilogy.
