The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle Of Five Armies, released in 2014 is the final film of the Hobbit trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. This film marketed as "The Defining Chapter" serves to both bring the tale of Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit to a close, while also setting the stage for the events that would happen in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. This film takes material from the final chapters of The Hobbit novel, as well as from the appendices from The Return Of The King novel, and then of course a huge heaping helping of just made up material. On a personal note this is also the only of the Middle Earth films that I did not see in the theater, which was a huge disappointment to me. First and foremost this movie is a high-fantasy film that revels more in its action sequences than it does its actual story telling. This is also the shortest of the Middle Earth movies, but even so it still feels like it is drawn out and extended beyond what is necessary. The story that is told in this film, when not being distracted by boringly long battle scenes, unnecessary romantic scenes, misplaced comedy, and scenes of "look at how great our special effects look", is actually a really good story. I have been very heavily critical of this series, and some of my friends state this as their least favourite of the six Middle Earth films, but I have some feelings about this one that might vary from that. First I want to focus on the actual story, I feel like the film shows Thorin's decent into madness and greed really well, and his going back on his word that he gave to the people of Lake Town when they gave him aid. This film also does an excellent job at setting up the backstory to the Lord Of The Rings, and I know i have been critical of that, which I will talk about in a moment, but I like how it was done here, it is useful and well done. The Hobbit as a novel, though served as a prequel of sorts to the Lord Of The Rings, was written as it's own stand alone story. It is part of the history, because Bilbo finds the ring. But the scheming of Gandalf, and his story that is separate from story of Bilbo and the dwarves is left out of the book. I get what they are doing here, and I get that they are trying very hard to make The Hobbit a part of the existing Lord Of The Rings film franchise, and honestly they did a good job at that. The problem is this, The Hobbit is an amazing tale, and that tale far too often got lost over the course of these films, and at times the story got too focused on linking it to the Lord Of The Rings rather than being a film adaptation of The Hobbit. My thought is this, why not create a film that is not based on a preexisting Tolkien novel, but based off of information from other Tolkien sources, that could serve as a link between the The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, create a movie that is purely written and created to tell what Gandalf was doing behind the scenes, to tell about the return of Sauron. I don't know what the legal possibility of this being done would be, but if Peter Jackson and company had done that, then the Hobbit could have just been a single movie, and then all of this other added stuff could have been its own one or two films, and then the Hobbit could have had a decent live action version made. So other than small parts I have picked at, none of these films are actually bad movies, they are all beautiful (I daresay breathtaking), they are amazingly cast, they (mostly) have amazing special effects, and amazing music. I would say that as far as visual look goes, and special effects are concerned The Battle Of Five Armies is the best looking of the three. Though the battle scenes went on far far far too long, they were well done (though holy shit Legolas' Dexterity score would have to be insanely high to do the shit that he does, it is a bit too over the top and honestly gets distracting). I actually don't find this part of the trilogy to be the worst of the three, I actually think it was very well done (for what it was as a conclusion to the two films that came before). From a technical view this film is actually quite wonderful. I am having a hard time reviewing this film on its own, and not as the final chapter, because the story of this film is hardly existing as its own work, but does actually work as a good bookend to the series. I did enjoy how this film wraps things up, and I now am excited to follow it up with the Lord Of The Rings films. Would I recommend this film? Yes, I feel like the Hobbit Trilogy should be viewed, and as a whole should be considered a must see series. I have been very critical of the series as a whole, but I will be honest, they are technically amazing movies, they are very well done. If you enjoyed the Lord Of The Rings and wished that the Hobbit did more to tie into it, then this series is your dream come true. If you are like me and you wanted a true film adaptation of The Hobbit, then be prepared for some frustration, and far too many "What The Fuck" moments. These films were made for fans of The Lord Of The Rings movies, not for fans of the Hobbit novel, and they are amazing at what they are. It was nice getting to spend this extra time in Middle Earth, and it was nice seeing more of the back story that bridged the works of Tolkien together, but there must be a better way to do this, couldn't we have had the idea I proposed earlier? Though like I said everyone should make it a priority to watch these films, they are breathtakingly beautiful, they are very very well done, and the cast is nearly perfect. PS. Never in the history of Middle Earth did an Elf and Dwarf have a love affair, especially not in The Hobbit, it was unnecessary, pointless, and a waste of time. This plot point created by the writers of the film, very much annoys me and angers me, because they seem to have enough knowledge of Middle Earth to throw in the extra back story, but they don't seem to know enough about Middle Earth lore to know that there is no way that that love between a Dwarf and Elf would ever exist.