Written By: Dan Geer

Watching The Hobbit Trilogy has been kind of like munching on a really good appetizer after you’ve already thoroughly enjoyed your filet mignon. We’ve already been blown away by The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, director Peter Jackson’s masterful film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s time-honored novel – a novel that perfected the world that was first established by Tolkien in The Hobbit twenty years prior. It’s one of the greatest sequels ever written. So it is probably inevitable that many will be underwhelmed with The Hobbit film trilogy as a whole after seeing The Battle of the Five Armies. Audiences have already been given the climax to the story, particularly with The Return of the King, and are now being asked to go backwards and enjoy the beginning just as much. That’s just not possible.

So while it is difficult to avoid comparing The Battle of the Five Armies with The Return of the King (or The Hobbit Trilogy to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, for that matter), in the end we really should only be judging this final film in The Hobbit Trilogy on its own merits, and question whether or not it is a worthy ending to the story being told in this trilogy. To critque it any other way just doesn’t make sense. With that in mind, I’m delighted to say that this film is indeed a worthy conclusion, and actually connects to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy quite seamlessly. That’s really all we should expect.

The Battle of the Five Armies wastes no time recapping what happened in the last two films, beginning with Smaug the dragon (Benedict Cumberbatch) wreaking havoc on the people of Lake-town, setting ablaze everything in sight, while the villagers attempt to escape and Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) seeks to slay the dragon. Meanwhile, in the Dwarven kingdom of Erebor, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) wrestles between his lust for gold and bringing honor to his newly-won position as King under the Mountain.

This inner conflict of course gives rise to outer conflict between the dwarves and other races of Middle Earth who wish to partake in the wealth of the Mountain. In addition, Azog the Defiler, his son Bolg, and an army of orcs are still on their way to take out Thorin and Company, and the mysterious Necromancer continues to regain his strength at Dol Guldur in an evil attempt to cover all of Middle Earth in everlasting darkness. War is coming from all fronts, and stuck in the middle of all of this is little Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who struggles to shine an honest and meaningful light into the inevitable dark that could help soften the oncoming slaughter.

Make no mistake, this is a war film to the core. The vast majority of The Battle of the Five Armies consists of battle, after battle, after battle, after battle. While this is perfectly acceptable, the film doesn’t really allow the audience time to breathe much at all during the war. It’s like being handed a fire hose to drink from without any time to swallow. We need those quiet character building moments with our heroes in between battles, and while we do get a few, it’s just not enough to balance out all of the action going on. The first two films were better at sorting this out. Perhaps the Extended Edition will help fill that void.

Having said that, every action scene in this film is pretty darn awesome. What fanboy (or fangirl) wouldn’t want to finally see a gigantic army of dwarves defending their brothers against a massive army of orcs? Or Galadriel, Elrond, Saruman and Gandalf facing off against the Necromancer? It’s every fan’s dream to see this kind of stuff, and The Battle of the Five Armies delivers in these areas superbly. If there is one thing we know Peter Jackson is great at, it’s massive fantasy battles, and all of the main characters get to show off their war skills in this film.

Having now completed The Hobbit Trilogy, I can honestly say that, while none of these films can be as great as The Lord of the Rings, they still hold their own quite well, and feel like the same world. Sure, it is true that The Hobbit did not need to be split into three films. However, this was really the best way to tell the story Tolkien envisioned. As was pointed out in my review of The Desolation of Smaug, a big part of why he included The Appendices at the end of The Lord of the Rings was to fill us in on story and character details that he thought of in hindsight that pertain to The Hobbit. It would be a complete slap to the face of Tolkien if these details were left out, so filming The Hobbit as a trilogy was really the only way to do the story justice.

Now, of course the writing team behind the film adaptation of The Hobbit did still make the decision to embellish a bit here and there, and even create a couple of subplots that were never in either The Hobbit or Tolkien’s Appendices. But even these embellishments feel like Tolkien wrote them. Adapting a book to film is a very difficult task to pull off, and the two mediums are quite different from each other and require different elements to make them work for an audience. Plus, if I’m being honest, there was probably only enough Tolkien material to create nearly three films, so I don’t mind that Peter Jackson and company added a little color and flare to flesh out a complete trilogy.

In the end, I’m ecstatic that we finally got to actually see the adventures of Bilbo Baggins brought to life. For this reviewer, it is really difficult to imagine The Hobbit films being any other way than what they are. Sure, they are not without fault, and The Battle of the Five Armies is technically my least favorite of the three films. But we really got the fullest, most richest depiction of the story we could ever ask for as a whole, and for that, I’m incredibly grateful.

Thank you, Peter Jackson, for taking us there and back again. You are truly one of a kind.

Rating: (out of four)

Other Reviews:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug