The ending we didn't deserve, too a trilogy we didn't need.

Rating: 5/10 (21 December 2014)

After going too see The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, excited but uneasy as the latest trailers rolled by on the cinema screen. I was worried, already having seen how misguided the choice of separating a book that is only about 300 pages long into three over two hour long films was. I could only sit and ponder over how they were going to create a well rounded story of the last section of a book and span it over two hours and 20 minutes. Well it certainly didn't live up too any hopes I had.
Immediately you are thrown into the peril of Lake-town as a soaring, extremely angry, ancient dragon looms in the skies above. With the warning bell ringing, I felt my heart start to pump as each bell rang through the ears of the Lake-town folk, and the panic began to spread throughout. This was by far one of actual impressive scenes of the film, you were consumed into the film just as the town was by the whirling firestorms that lit up the cinema screen.
Then you cut back to the gang, the dwarfs are safely high up in one of the lookout towers of Erebor, hold on, weren't you guys just outside on the outskirts watching Smaug sore across the sky in head of Lake- town. This was the moment that started my saddening journey through 'The Battle of Five Armies'. It may only be a minute flaw but there were plenty more, which just exposed how little detail Mr.Jackson had payed too the overall wholeness and realism of the film. And as the film went on it had become clear to me that he had just thought oh well let's just create a CGI Middle-Earth, cause why go out and shoot those beautiful New Zealand landscapes that created the rich and immerse feel of Middle-Earth when we could do it all on computers. Being that it is only towards the end of the film that we see any defining real-world set shots which comforted my now disappointed and bleak view of the film.
Now the middle and majority of the film is where I underwent the sights that lead me to this view. Apart from being cut from different points of battle for nearly most of it, that only left me wishing I had needed the toilet just so I could take a break from the never ending fighting. This is where the films structure fell apart, as for some reason big, over dramatic battles were more important than characters development, except for the exploration of Thorin's inner evil and greed balancing his future of protagonist or antagonist on the edge of a knife until be undergoes a bizarre golden epiphany. And don't even get me started on the dwarf, elf love story that Jackson has said he was sorry for, saying it was for the teenage girls in his audience. Did you want to make your sell-out that more obvious? Five Armies was the end to the hollow, Tolkien shaming, blockbuster trilogy that exploits a beautiful story into a meant to be spectacular and fantastic money making scheme.