‘Battle of the Five Armies': A setting sun on the theater experience

There was a bit of a flare to the attendant who gave us popcorn at the movie theater—just a bit of life that desired to emerge from beyond the staleness of employment. Instead of just scooping the popcorn into the large overpriced cup, he spun it around his finger like a six-gun fast draw and once full returned the scoop to a holster on the side of the popcorn maker. I told him I appreciated the flair as the young 17-year-old was glad I noticed. It was good to see today in the eyes of a young person someone not yet defeated but looking to the future with ambition and flair. It made our trip to see the bittersweet last Hobbit movie Battle of the Five Armies that much more wonderful.

My readers here know that I am likely to give the film a glaringly optimistic review because when something impresses me, I do get excited about it. Like the kid at the popcorn machine, I have spun such things around my fingers for several decades, and still do. When I see the same effort in the products I use, whether it is popcorn or a new movie, I enjoy the spectacle fully. And I did.

But there was constant sadness while watching this last film. It wasn’t the film’s fault—but it was in the presentation itself. All during the film I was thinking that this was the last time. It would be the last time I’d get to see such a fabulous Gandalf played by Ian McKellen, or a Bilbo Baggins played by Martin Freeman or any number of the other cast. These Peter Jackson films are just epic spectacles which made much more accessible the great work of J.R.R. Tolkien.   On the business end of things, these Hobbit films almost didn’t get made with union trouble brewing and Tolkien family squabbles missing the point of the films entirely. If J.R.R. Tolkien were alive today he’d be impressed with Jackson’s efforts, but the parasitic studio system driven by union wage labor is lost to the central message of this latest film, that sickness that Thorin has throughout this last film, the greed of the gold and what it does to otherwise good minds was evident throughout the movie.

 

The metaphor of the movie was simple; the dragon Smaug protected the various races of Middle-Earth from their own internal greed by representing a greater threat which united them. The moment that the threat was removed, the various societies of Middle-Earth sought out the Lonely Mountain to bask in its treasures. It wasn’t lost to my eyes that some of the rewriting that Jackson had done in the film was intended to accentuate more fully the negative experience he had while bringing the Hobbit to life in the first place—particularly dealing with the Hollywood community. Due to his magnificent skill as a director he built on the Hobbit film set for all three movies a family atmosphere that caused the heavy actors like McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving to cross over the union desire to picket the film as Jackson resisted the attempts from labor to take control.  The labor unions involved knew what to expect out of the Hobbit films because the Lord of the Rings trilogy had been so successful winning so many Academy Awards. Not this time, the Hobbit films may be loved by the fans, but Hollywood internally is scoffing at Jackson and his cinema family who chose to stick together instead of giving way to the Wilshire Blvd thugs. There’ll be no awards for this Hobbit film of Five Armies, even though it deserves them. The politics of Hollywood won’t allow it. But Jackson cleverly applied his own frustrations to the characters barricaded into the Lonely Mountain and told the story much more potently than anything ever written by Tolkien because of that conflict.

The film was loaded with so many metaphors like the one previously described that it will continue to be unraveled for years to come. However, for me, it was sad to watch the last of each scene knowing that it may never come again that such an assembly of talent was put on the screen for the purpose of such a grand exploration of the nature of evil. From the music to the behind the line technicians, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies represents the very best of what movie makers can pull out of their craft for the enjoyment of their audiences. There was never any remark of a sexual nature in any of the films, there was never any sophomoric humor presented, each movie culminating with this last one had a sincerity within that is extremely rare and comes largely by the fact that all the Jackson films are essentially foreign films from Wellington, New Zealand and not made anywhere else. They have a country innocence about them that is pure and good in virtually every way. While Hollywood itself will continue to have individual successes—as 2015 is shaping up to be a big financial year with a new Mad Max film, Jurassic World, and a new Avengers film ending the year with another Star Wars movie—the overall health of the industry is very sick. Of the movies mentioned they are all dust offs from an earlier time. There is nothing original about them and people are only going to pay for a dust-off so long and pay so much money. The vacuum of creative ability that is on the horizon from 2020 on is truly terrifying to a culture like the United States that loves its intellectual media—it’s music, its movies, its television and so forth.   The Hobbit films are unique in that they are truly an honest and loving approach to a well established source material that was beloved to begin with—made only better through Jackson’s efforts. It will be a long time if ever that such a thing happens again.

 

So my wife and I sat to the very end of the very last credit until the theater lights came on and the cleanup crew came to prepare the place for the next showing. I really didn’t want to leave the theater because once we did the big screen experience of Jackson’s Hobbit films would be over forever for us. I wouldn’t make it back to the theater to see it again before it had its run, and I knew that Middle-Earth would never be shown so gloriously again on such a large format.   Sure, many homes these days have nice theater systems which in many ways rival the movie theater experience. More and more I prefer those over the theater where it cost twenty dollars for two medium Cokes and a bucket of popcorn. But the kid at the counter who dished out the snack with some flair made the twenty bucks worth it, and Jackson made going to the movies fun for what feels to me like some of the last times.

Of the coming slate emerging from Hollywood in 2015 and 2016 there is a lot that I will personally be excited about. I love stories—particularly movies. I love books, I love folklore, mythology—I love anything that shows creative impulse even if such a thing shows itself in a Power Point presentation. I love to see minds on fire and often in really good movies, which is what you get to experience as a theater dweller, the effort is generally easy to see when it’s there. But at my age time is moving very quickly. Two years of movies won’t be enough to fill that hunger that I have and there aren’t a lot of promising films coming after this next slate of blockbusters. The Hobbit is one of those spectacles that are unusually good in every category of film production so it isn’t something to take lightly when seeing it at the movie theater.

I wish every movie was like the Battle of the Five Armies. To see Gandalf captured among a hidden evil with Galadriel coming to his rescue to vanquish the threat to a far off region to regroup for the future Lord of the Rings trilogy was the kind of stuff that makes you want to purchase a $20 dollar popcorn. But there isn’t much out there anymore that does and for that I felt like this last Hobbit film was more of a setting sun than just a trip to the movies as an encroaching darkness envelopes a creative culture that I truly enjoy—and will miss.

Rich Hoffman

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