The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Review by adverbiallyyours

Rating: Null/10 (17 December 2014)

Bilbo and his company of dwarfs finally reach the Lonely Mountain, but Thorin's homecoming is not as joyous an occasion as everyone would have thought.
This review is as spoiler-free as I could possibly make it despite how badly I want to talk about every little thing that happened in this movie Picking up where The Desolation of Smaug Ended, The Battle of the Five Armies begins with Smaug havocking Lake-town and the dwarfs searching Erebor. Thorin, falling under the same curse of his predecessors, grapples with what is real and what is imaginary amidst the rest of the world preparing for war. The story concludes with an epic battle worthy of the standards we have all come to expect from Peter Jackson.
My Thoughts If you have read my other Hobbit reviews, you know that I look at the books and movies separately, as the movies have added, subtracted, and rearranged characters, lines, and scenes. That being said, I feel as though this trilogy could not have ended more perfectly and appropriately. Jackson went into this movie with the paramount intention of tying The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he exceeded my expectations for doing so. The added scenes helped this movie reach its conclusion instead of—what I felt were—filler scenes to make certain battles seem longer or different meetings seem more foreboding; and quite frankly, some of the added pieces were badass. One of my favorite "extra" scenes is how Gandalf escapes captivity; it's a fight scene worthy of the characters in it and the actors who play them.
If you haven't read the books, I'm sure you can assume that there are some pretty intense deaths in this movie (there are five armies fighting, after all). Even though I knew they were coming, they were heart-wrenchingly intense.
In closing, I think this was an excellent conclusion to The Hobbit trilogy and the tie-ins to The Lord of the Rings trilogy could not have been any better. There is a great transition involving Legolas (I geeked out in the theater), and there was a cliché but perfect transition to The Fellowship of the Ring at the end of the movie.
My only criticism was even though PJ sold me on Tauriel, I'm sort of confused how she left the story; I'm hoping that it'll be addressed in the extended edition.
If you see this movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed; and if you're anything like me, you'll be kind of sad when you leave the theater knowing that this is the last trip to Middle Earth.