The epic and emotional conclusion to Peter Jackson's Middle Earth

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2014)

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the finale in the trilogy of Hobbit films and most likely Peter Jacksons final visit to Middle Earth, and boy does he go out with a bang. The film picks up from where The Desolation of Smaug ended and from that moment you know that this film is going for all out action. Over half of this films runtime is filled with what we loved the most from the Lord of the Rings trilogy; the battles. The fast pace and epic battles are what make this film so brilliant. From the enormous size of a single dragon to the epic spectacle of thousands of warriors all going against each other, this war of The Lonely Mountain was the real star of the film.
And in saying this it leads to one of the minor downsides of the film, and that is that for the first half of the film Bilbo Baggins aka 'The Hobbit' is almost like a supporting character to many others. It is a minor detail but he didn't get enough screen time i felt over the course of the whole film. Despite the screen time he had, he still received a lot of character development, and along with Thorin were the only two characters who really developed throughout the film. Even though this film was shorter then the previous two hobbit films i do feel that around 20 minutes could have been cut out in the middle of the film where the pace noticeably slowed down to keep with the fast pace of the film. But these issues didn't take too much away from my enjoyment of the film as the fast paced epic battles along with the ties to The Lord of the Rings give a fitting conclusion to this trilogy of films. - 8.8