A very disappointing conclusion to a trilogy that could have been on par with that of the Lord of the Rings.

Rating: 5/10 (11 December 2014)

"The Battle of the Five Armies" unfortunately lets down the films that come before it in the trilogy that is "The Hobbit". The film's director/Peter Jackson's failure to find the right balance between battle and plot content, which could be attributed to a laziness of sorts, is the reason for that. It's probably also fair to state that it could be attributed to how coming out of the film, I felt that I was the semi-victim of what has now become relatively common in Hollywood, the tactic that is turning a film into 2 or 3, and often labelled as a money-grabbing one. In regards to how Jackson fails to find the balance between the battle and plot content in "The Battle of the Five Armies", contrasting with something he had done so well in "Return of the King", it is almost as if he was hoping that the audience wouldn't notice how little plot the film actually has, by instead packing it with a battle. This really is the films downfall. Even where there is opportunity for Jackson to pack in some plot, I'm referring to the ending in particular here, he doesn't take it. Instead we are left with a film whose second half is mindless, whose violence can be described as that too and just there as a means of filling a third film. Where Jackson does insert plot content, it comes not from the original Tolkien book, which for me was what made the first two films of the trilogy so good, but from God knows where. (To be fair to Jackson a lot of what was in those first two films was not from the book. Yet at least they seemed like they could have been compared to rubbish like the relationship between Tauriel the elf and Fili the dwarf in this film for example!) I suppose it could be argued that I just preferred the quest format of the first two films. The lack of plot content also manages to have had an effect on the relationships audience members had been developing with characters since the start of the trilogy. I found that, by the end of "The Battle of the Five Armies", I did not care nearly as much about the Dwarfs as I previously had. The film's ending again doesn't help here. The battle scenes also do well to bore the audience and detach from not only the film, but also from the relationships that they had been developing. What is the saving grace of the film though, is its first half, up to where the battle begins, the turning-point from which the film begins to go downhill for me. Whilst watching the first half of the film I began to wonder whether I would be walking out of this cinema by the end of the film thinking that "The Hobbit" trilogy was on par with, or perhaps even better than that of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. There were several moments in the first half where I found myself quietly whispering to my neighbour "that was awesome" whilst demanding fist bumps off him. Even when the battle started, I was excited, and deservedly so. Jackson deserves praise for those battle scenes. I'm sure that if I was to tune into the film at random the battle scene at hand would keep me gripped. But an hour and a half or so later and with the same shots as well as the same battles, I found that my enthusiasm had depleted. What I thought could save the film from there was a decent ending, yet unfortunately this never came. In regards to performances, it's always difficult to stand out in an epic like this, but I felt that although Martin Freeman (playing Bilbo Baggins) and Ian McKellen (playing Gandalf) had both put in good performances previously in the trilogy, this was by far their weakest. The only performance really worth praising in regards to "The Battle of the Five Armies" is Luke Evans' (playing Bard), in what seems to be a coming-of-age story for him. Ultimately, "The Battle of the Five Armies" first half is its saving grace, yet its battle-filled second half, poor ending, and lack of plot content let it down, making it a very disappointing conclusion to something that could have been, for me, on par with the original Lord of the Rings trilogy.