"The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies" Review

                                  

  

To call The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies the best of Peter Jackson's second Middle Earth trilogy would be to pick the least of three evils. I enjoyed some of the fleshed-out characterizations. For example, Thorin's transformation from honorable dwarf leader to foolhardy King is interesting, but the rest of the film feels both gratuitous and lazy. 

First of all, there's no reason why the opening scene should not have been part of last year's The Desolation of Smaug. The fight with the dragon at Lake-town feels like an emotional climax to the second film's mini-narrative. It would've worked better as a cliffhanger for the events that immediately follow in Armies. Otherwise, battle scenes are more exhausting than ever before since we have nothing else important happening outside the fighting. Suddenly, I miss having Sam & Frodo climbing Mount Doom to distract me yet keep me on the edge of my seat.

Other important Hobbit character arcs, like those of Bard (Luke Evans) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lily), never reach satisfying conclusions. It's as if Jackson lost them in the frenetic clusterf**k of a battle and just forgot about them entirely.

The stage feels shoddily set for The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien fans, see at risk of disappointment.

D