The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Starring Martin Freeman, Orlando Bloom
Directed by Peter Jackson
After more than a decade, billions of dollars in global box office receipts, and thousands of dead orcs, Peter Jackson’s often rousing journey to Middle Earth is presumably over.
Despite an action packed third and final entry in The Hobbit films, boasting one of the longest skirmishes in the series, The Battle of the Five Armies goes out with a bang but carries none of the emotional resonance of the previous Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The story picks up immediately following the conclusion of The Desolation of Smaug, as the diabolical dragon is laying waste to the residents of Laketown. The sequence wraps up rather quickly and the winged wonder is soon a distant memory as the company of dwarves reclaim their homeland in the Lonely Mountain while their fearless leader Thorin Oakenshield’s (Richard Armitage) lust for newfound gold finds him battling a nasty case of "dragon sickness".
As the plot elements unfold, it becomes clear that hordes of vicious villains are coming for a piece of the treasure and alliances between men and elves will be tested to the max.
It all gets convoluted as Jackson and his writing team’s excessive padding of a relatively tiny novel begins to reveal pointless subplots and a plethora of visual effects-driven fights. The Battle of the Five Armies has the shortest runtime of the six movies (at 144 minutes) but still feels like a slog as it drags to an inexorable conclusion.
Sadly, the Hobbit trilogy will always simply remain good enough.
