Don't waste your time

Rating: 1/10 (19 January 2015)

The long anticipated conclusion to Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy has finally arrived! Starring Ian Mckellen (Gandalf) and Martin Freeman (Bilbo) The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was far from impressive. Full of cheap animation and useless plot points this final piece of the Lord of the Rings collection was a poor excuse for a film, and strayed so far from the book that Tolkien rolled over in his grave.
This film picks up directly where The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug left off. Smaug is in the midst of destroying the village of Lake Town while Bilbo Baggins and his Dwarf friends watch from the Misty Mountain. Once Smaug has began destroying Lake Town the vigilante Bard manages to escape from jail, and slay the dragon in an unrealistically fast amount of time. Taking refuge on the shores of the lake the people of Lake Town then flee to the Misty Mountain to claim their portion of the Mountain's treasure to rebuild their town. Meanwhile, Thorin and his fellow dwarfs have confined themselves inside the mountain, determined to keep the wealth to themselves. Upon the arrival of the elves who are also looking for their claim to the treasure, the dwarfs declare war on men and elves. The orcs then immediately arrive starting the legendary battle of the five armies.
Although the work of actors such as Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Richard Armitage (Thorin) within the film was incredibly well done, it was quickly ruined by Peter Jackson's sloppy editing, special effects and dreadfully long fight scenes. Fans already knew going in that in order to make a film with so many short characters, doubles would have to be used in place of the original actors. Unfortunately though there was very little done to conceal the use of the doubles resulting in awkward blurs over faces and in Gandalf's case his hat would drop over his face. In many scenes actors were also replaced with entirely animated versions of themselves. This would not have been a problem if a higher degree of detail was put into these CGI characters, but unfortunately they were unfinished and consisted of a quality no more than your average video game. The there is the fight scenes, or fight scene. I say scene because that's really all the film is. One big long drawn out fight scene that leaves you wishing for the film's end two thirds of the way through the movie. Then, every time the film seems like it is going to end, it doesn't. Instead, Peter Jackson draws out the film even longer by adding scene upon scene of content that was originally never in the book.
All in all this movie could have been a lot better had it stayed to the original story and put more effort into the filming and special effects. The only compliment I could give to Jackson's work is his courage to re-innovate the industry with his use of high frame rate filming. It gave a unique feel to the film, but at times it resembled quality of old British television and highlighted his production flaws even more. The only reason one should consider watching this movie is to bring closure to the previous two films. Otherwise stay away from the entire trilogy and read the book instead.