An Almost Satisfying Conclusion To An Often Unsatisfying Trilogy

Rating: 7/10 (17 December 2014)

I almost gave this a miss . I fell in love with Jackson's LOTR trilogy and found myself often underwhelmed by large segments of the other Hobbit films which often took a long time to go nowhere . Even the title THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES conjures up what to expect - big overlong battles realised by some dodgy CGI . On top of that I'm not really a great cinema goer down to the fact you have to share an auditorium with other human beings and Hell can indeed be other people . None of this is helped by certain cinema chains allowing food and drink in to the showing . The first trailer was an advert for the Odeon's Croma Pizzeria where patrons can walk in a showing guzzling their ugly fat faces on pizza and I can confirm this temptation was too good for some salad dodgers to pass up . Bad enough cinemas are full of people slurping drinks and munching on crunchy popcorn but now respectful cinema fans have to endure the stench of jalapeños wafting around . We're not allowed to smoke in public places but we're allowed to annoy innocents with junk food . Sorry Odeon cinema you've just lost a patron for life . And this conclusion had better be bloody good in order to distract me from the stench and noise of the present cinema environment
So did it ? Just about . The third part is the strongest part of the trilogy as with the previous two films less would have been much much more and you're aware of the very cynical marketing trick of making three films each lasting on average 2.5 hours when you could have had a superb film lasting three hours . One thing I did notice early on is that I'd forgotten who most of the characters were since I hadn't bothered rewatching the two previous films and if you can't remember who was who and how they fit in to the story this must be seen as a creative failure of sorts , but to be fair the plot isn't exactly taxing and it's easy to pick up what's previously happened . Perhaps even better it's easy to pick up where it's going and several scenes do overlap in to the narrative of the later LOTR trilogy . One thing the LOTR trilogy was very good at was pointing out that greed for money are ultimately self destructive and again we see the same sort of subtext which nothing else means Jackson's stream of six films are very consistent
One wishes that Jackson had kept to subtext but unfortunately he himself becomes greedy for spectacle and so has to introduce overlong battle scenes which soon outlive their welcome . To give the director some credit a few of the fight scenes do contain extras involved in intricate choreography in the fights but there's often a reliance on sweeping shots that don't entirely convince you that they're anything more than something created on computer software . Like so much of this trilogy bigger is not necessarily better
So in summary apart from the unwanted smells and sound effects emitting from the audience I don't really feel I had wasted my time and money visiting the cinema to watch the Hobbit trilogy . This conclusion is darker in tone than its two predecessors but unlike LOTR I wasn't totally blown away and one hopes Hollywood can stop all their cynicism by making a story with two hours plot in to a franchise which unfortunately is becoming more and more common as seen in the TWILIGHT and HUNGER GAMES franchise