The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

If you haven't read The Hobbit and/or if you like the first two movies: I envy you of sorts...

If someone had told me some years ago that I would consider walking out from a Tolkien movie opening night, I would have slapped them with a cod. Or a salmon. The Hobbit trilogy is crap.

It's little more than a long list of invented battles and love stories to attract a widest possible audience, as well as loads of idiotic storyline to make the story slide into the Lord of the Rings movies as smooth as an Elven ass.

I understand that some adaption is required from book to screen, but when dealing with a book more or less only surpassed by the Bible and the IKEA catalogue, one should tread carefully.

Do yourself a favor. Read the book. Let your mind be the big screen.

Fmovies: Well, I have to say that I'm glad that's over. The final movie was well worth the price of admission, which in my case was a free ticket to a preview screening.

I found this movie to be a stretch and as the final movie in a trilogy that was getting less interesting the further you went into the series, I left feeling extremely disappointed, and glad I didn't pay for the premium experience (3D, Imax, etc).

There was a little too much CG this time around, and it wasn't even all that great. Case in point two close scenes with a rider approaching and leaving were clearly CG...they couldn't even afford to use a real horse and rider? Come on...

The battle scenes went on way too long and in parts were even more ridiculous than the "riding the broken wooden bridges all the way down to the bottom of the cavern..." scene in the earlier edition of this series, and since the battle scenes were pretty much all that carried this movie, well...

Yes, this movie does have to be seen and it should be viewed on a big screen. However, in the opinion of this reviewer, waiting until it appears in a second run theatre will provide better value for money.

It's a movie that wraps up a series, but when compared to Peter Jackson's original LOTR work it pales and is as pale as an orc who has been working in the basement of Orthanc. At night. With the lights out.

What a difference an Extended Edition makes. For the first part we got some jolly embellishment. For The Desolation of Smaug we got bags more depth and character. For The Battle of the Five Armies, it may - I hope - be transformative. Because right now this feels like An Unfinished Journey.

It's as if, after all the complaints about splitting a pamphlet of a novel into three parts, Peter Jackson is playing a joke on us: This is what you get when you ask for Middle-earth-lite. Characters we've come to love or loathe arc into nothing; others (e.g. Beorn and Radagast) are given literally seconds of screen time; and for the first time in this prequel trilogy, a whole chapter (The Return Journey) is pretty much elided entirely.

I'd like to be clear on my admiration for what Peter Jackson has done with The Hobbit so far. For all The Lord of the Rings' mythic grandeur and complex world-building, there's a warm geniality and brisk impetus to these lovingly crafted films. And those qualities are married to a thematic depth missing from its bedtime story source. Home and borders are themes that have run through this trilogy, from Bilbo's (Martin Freeman) heartfelt declaration of solidarity at the end of An Unexpected Journey, to Kili's (Aidan Turner) fevered speech to Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) as she heals his wounds in Desolation, when they realise reconciliation is possible. Heck, I even like the addition of Tauriel - though her unsatisfying conclusion is perhaps typical of a final chapter that too often fails to tie up its loose ends.

The movie kicks off from precisely where the second ended, with the dread dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) descending upon Laketown. The citizens flee but nothing can stop the cataclysm - until a certain someone finds an ingenious way to pierce the beast. Then there's nemesis #2: Sauron (also Cumberbatch). We get to see some familiar faces face-off with this faceless monstrosity.

The story then enters its most intriguing phase: a kind of psychodrama involving Thorin (Richard Armitage) and his sickening relationship with gold and power. It's the one time we really glimpse that signature Jackson oddness, in a wonderful hallucinatory sequence where Thorin imagines he's sinking in a lake of gold.

The narrative follows the book fairly closely. This was, after all, the stage of the story where Professor Tolkien finally foregrounded politics and ethics and the machinations of characters ahead of adventure. The film is at its most successful in the quieter moments, as Thranduil (a subtle Lee Pace) ponders the duty of the elves; as Bard (a brooding Luke Evans) comes to the gate of the mountain to plead for peace; and as Thorin struggles with his "dragon-sickness" (i.e. greed), while Bilbo wrestles with the dilemma of what to do with a certain stolen gemstone.

Thorin was presented at first as this trilogy's Aragorn. But over time we've learned of the dangerous pride that ruined his grandfather. Thorin's hubris and arrogance is in stark contrast to Bilbo's very relatable and achievable traits of decency and humility. The gulf between them is intriguing and wisely plundered for drama. Armitage and Bilbo provide the best performances of the film - mostly internal; mostly in the eyes - and their farewell is one of the more moving moments in a trilogy that has largely prioritised humour over pathos.

The battle itself is undoubtedly impressive - great roaring hordes punctuated with spectacular gi

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies fmovies. Peter Jackson, with this new trilogy, which adapts a somewhat long children's fairy tale into a three-part action epic, each movie being three hours long and delving into completely irrelevant stories that are only hinted at in Tolkien's body of work, has really destroyed his reputation as the Tolkien translator. He will always live in the shadow of The Lord of the Rings, which is a sumptuous, beautiful, heartrending, thrilling masterpiece.

I don't know what happened. But Jackson sacrificed tone, realism, characterization, and story when he adapted The Hobbit. It is unrecognizable as work by the same director.

There are so many problems with this trilogy and this movie that is nigh impossible to list them. Nearly every scene is a real travesty, and the whole operation is an affront to the source material and fans of LOTR. The movies make hyper-violent beheadings and mass slaughter into orgies of staged action sequences and dumb gags. The orcs, which are now entirely computer-generated, are no longer compelling or realistic, and they are seemingly significantly more fearsome than in LOTR... It takes what the audience understands about Middle Earth and makes it BIGGER, in a completely childish overextension of the original story, to make things even more epic! Were-worms and enormous bats - these don't exist in the larger and more climactic battle in LOTR, but sure, they existed back then, right? Sure! Jackson also turns characters into absolutely ridiculous flat caricatures. Thranduil, the bourgeois blue-blood riding an elk, Dain, Thorin's cousin, who rests his enormous high- pitched Scottish girth on a wild boar, the she- elf who falls in love with a dwarf... It's stomach churning how Peter Jackson has combined a love for extreme violence and an eye for juvenile gags and unbelievable characters, and in a beloved, classic setting.

This movie, once again, extends Legolas past human bounds, past elven bounds, past the bounds of Newtonian physics, as he sprints, newly cyan eyes shining, on falling bricks and hangs from bats. We get to watch dwarfs behead seiging armies of orcs, who are impotent to the blows of the tiny Olympians. Again, oh no!, Middle Earth is doomed, the age of men is over, (cue slow-motion shots of Gandalf looking stricken, Thorin killing orcs with Sparta kicks)... The feel, the script, the look is all taken from LOTR and rehashed with this cast of cardboard characters, in a badly rendered world of excess and fancy.

I expected mature film-making for thoughtful audiences expecting real characters living in a real world with a compelling story, but obviously that was too much to expect.

If one of the important themes of The Hobbit is the rejection of greed, as we can see personified by Thorin, then is it hypocritical that Hollywood has churned out three abominably shallow and violent films out of The Hobbit for the public's consumption? I think so. I hate what these films represent, and what they could have done.

I was distinctly underwhelmed by the first two Hobbit movies, I thought they were good but just that "Good". They live in the shadow of the Lord Of The Rings movies and simply paled in comparison and so going into The Battle Of The Five Armies I expected more of the same.

According to both IMDb and the profit margin this was the most poorly received of the franchise, clearly people did not like the film by comparison. But as usual, I have to be different.

I consider this to not only be the best of the Hobbit franchise but also hot on the heels in quality as the LOTR trilogy.

The story culminates beautifully and if you can get past the many changes that were made you'll see the finale of a wondrous tale and a battle on screen that blew me away.

Once again the fantastic cast, stunning score, mind blowing effects and sheer beauty envelope you into the world of Middle Earth and I was gripped.

Yes its not flawless, but it is pretty damn close.

The Good:

Amazing opening

Action scenes are brutal

James Nesbitt

Evangeline Lilly

The Bad:

Still a lot of changes

Fili's death was poorly done