One of the arduous things about watching Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was experiencing the intense parent-child tumult. Arwen gains independence from her father and pledges fidelity to her love for Aragorn above all else, but it involves her devolving into a frail state, becoming as fragile as all the rest of Middle Earth before Sauron's ascension and the elves' retreat. Faramir gains recognition from his impossibly stubborn father, the steward of Gondor, but not even after essentially throwing his life away in a hopeless battle and only after being mid-part cooked in a bonfire of his father's own contrivance. This is an older generation's sturm und dang; a break-through occurs — stern authority is breached — but it's so exhausting you have to hope that once it's been successfully had out that none of the parties involved ever re-acquire the stamina to re-stage it. "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies" threatened a...