Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) by Thefilmfanatic — 17 Dec 2014

First and foremost I would like to point out that I'm incredibly biased towards Jackson's Tolkien films given my love of Lord of the Rings and despite the shortcomings of the first two Hobbit films, I still believed that Peter Jackson could strike gold yet again. When this film was changed from There and Back Again to The Battle of the Five Armies, I became hesitant about the finale of the trilogy, but thankfully I was wrong.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (BotFA) is a visually-stunning, action-packed and tear-jerking finale to the action adventure trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Peter Jackson brings us a Lord of the Rings-esque final film, unlike the previous two Hobbit films, with style, grace and aesthetics potentially better than those of the original release of Return of the King. Although the premise diverted from the book's content by adding other characters and changing the focus of the narrative, the overall story in the end was better suited for a big screen adaptation that acted as not only the finale of the Hobbit trilogy, but the end of the Jackson era of Tolkien films.

Unfortunately I was still disappointed with the CGI-laden fight scenes, particularly the use of CGI orcs, goblins and other humanoid creatures rather than full-scale, large cast fight scenes like Lord of the Rings. However, outside of that criticism there is not much else negative to say about this film. Even with the CGI-induced Middle Earth, we are given one of the more realistic representations of a dragon in any film. Smaug is unbelievable, and that creation alone is Oscar worthy. The cast is phenomenal, I mean talk about star-studded. I found that some characters were a bit one-dimensional as an attempt to help keep Bilbo and company as the focus of the film, but Thranduil stole every scene he was in. I would love to see Peter Jackson do a standalone film surrounding the painful backstory of the king of Mirkwood.

In the end The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is more than the finale of the Hobbit trilogy, but the end of Peter Jackson's era of Tolkien films bringing a sense of nostalgia to fans of any age sad to see their favourite characters and the visually stunning Middle Earth for the last time.