Probably the weakest of the LOTR series, but still worth your time

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2014)

There's a lot of stuff I like in "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies", and not just because it's another film set in J.R.R. Tolkien's wonderful world of Middle Earth. There's also some things that make this a flawed film, perhaps, story-wise, the weakest of the three parts of the Hobbit movie. If you're not caught up with the series, you're out of luck because you won't understand a thing that's going on here. The story begins where it left off, with Smaug the dragon attacking Laketown. As Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is caught in the ensuing conflict caused partially because of Thorin Oakenshield's greed (Thorin played by Richard Armitage) and partially by the Necromancer's armies converging on the people of Middle Earth who are seeking refuge or riches in Erebor. One thing that shocked me with the advertising of the film is the amount of attention being given to Benedict Cumberbatch. If you're catching this movie to hear his terrific performance as Smaug you will be severely disappointed because he is not in the film a whole lot. This leads me into my biggest criticism of both this movie and of the trilogy overall. I reserved judgment on whether or not a single book could be split up into three movies until I saw all three films. Now, I'd say that there was enough material to make two films, not quite three. It's really obvious with the way the first half-hour this movie plays out that they really had to carefully choose where to put filler material in order to have three movies that ended on an exciting climax AND a cliff hanger. I can't go much into it, but you will wonder if some of the early developments of this film couldn't have been included in that second movie. BofFA, more than either of the other two films also falls into some of the trappings that plague prequels. I'm talking about people dropping names or pointing out locations just so you can go "I get that reference!" I've got just a few other criticisms, and then we're going to move onto what I liked about the film. My first complaint is because of the nature of this film's story, orcs are made to look like total chumps. Count how many battle-worthy characters we've got. Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Legolas, Bard, Tauriel, Thranduil, Dwaling, Balin, Kíli, Fíli, Dori, Nori, Ori, Óin, Glóin, Bifur, Bofur. If only half are involved in combat and given their time to shine, that's a huge amount of orcs that have to be killed solely to show off our heroes' skills. I thought that in many scenes, the legions of orcs were so easily dispatched that they might as well have been those idiotic robots from "Star Wars: Episode I". Finally, there's Ryan Gage as Alfrid, who is the most cartoonish, two-dimensional villains I've seen in any of these Middle Earth films. His role is pointless and should have been cut out to focus more on the main characters. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we can talk about what works. What I really enjoyed is that even though this is the 6th film in the series, it still contains plenty of new sights. We've never witnessed what an army of Dwarfs looks like, or some of the creatures and locations in this film. I found that while some of the big battles in the story lacked impact, there was a lot of tension in the most personal moments of combat, particularly the mano-y-mano sequences with Bolg or Azog against our heroes. I found that the film really complimented the other films very well in terms of scale and spectacle. If you have the fortune of watching these films in chronological order, you will see a great progression in terms of sweeping character arcs and a real escalation in the threats of the opponents and in the battles that are fought. The visuals in the film are once again grandiose and it never felt like anything here was just a rehash of the earlier moments in the series. I found that there were more than a few really powerful and tense moments, even when no one was fighting. Particularly in the way that Thorin's character is focused on during the film, I was excited to see his character change over time and I was scared when his personality changed for the darker. There are some very nice subtle moments where you can spot the tiniest hints of where characters will ultimately go once the LOTR comes around and they felt very organic. I do feel like it is a satisfying conclusion and even more important, it makes you excited to watch both the previous films so that you can get the whole story of Bilbo Baggins in one fell swoop and that it awakened an incredible desire in me to marathon the other Lord of the Rings films. Overall I would say that this trilogy isn't nearly as good as the films that follow it, but it does a good job of tying together two stories that are widely different in tone. I had several problems with "Battle of the Five Armies", but ultimately I did enjoy it. My suggestion to really relish the film is to watch at least "The Desolation of Smaug" in the 24 hours preceding your viewing of this film. That high you get from seeing Smaug finally take flight will get you excited to see the big opening here and you will be able to fully immerse yourself in the best parts of BotFA, which are the subtle hints of what is yet to come, the personal moments between the characters we've seen evolve over time and the satisfying final showdown between the heroes and the villains. "Battle of the Five Armies" is flawed, but it's an epic fantasy film that wraps this larger-than-life series nicely. (3-D theatrical version on the big screen, December 18, 2014)