The most underrated and under-appreciated movie of 2014

Rating: 9/10 (23 June 2015)

The Hobbit Trilogy will forever be one of those classic polarizing film trilogies where you either love em' or you hate em'. Were they as good as The Lord of the Rings? Hell NO (and it was unfair for anybody to judge them based on a different trilogy based on better books). Were any of the Hobbit movies unwatchable or boring, though? Definitely not. The first one may have been a little slow in the first 40-50 minutes, but after that it turned into a really good story. The fact that all 3 of them are positive on Rotten Tomatoes proves that they were under-appreciated by many Middle-Earth fans. Some people acted like we should be outside Peter Jackson's house with torches and pitchforks. They weren't THAT bad, and they also weren't Lord of the Rings-award winning-ridiculously awesome either.. They were good, not great. B+ work from Peter & Company.
The Battle of the Five Armies was set up to be the best in the trilogy, but it did fall slightly short of what it could have been. I only had 3 problems with the film (and all 3 are forgivable because what I saw was still epic and satisfying). 1) One of the 5 armies from the book is completely missing from the battle. The orcs fight alongside a large army of wolves in the book, but they chose to just have 2 armies of orcs fighting alongside a handful of trolls, some bats, and maybe a few wolves. I assume the blu-ray extended version might include a lot more wolves/wolf-riders wreaking havoc. 2) Beorn played a HUGE part in turning the tide of battle in the book, but in the movie we only saw like 10 seconds of him fighting. I was hoping to see AT LEAST a minute of him slaying orcs/wolves left and right. 3) Most of the trolls were as large and fearsome as we would expect, but 3 trolls appear at different times in the film and looked about as stupid/cartoonish as they could be. Maybe those trolls were just supposed to be realistically deformed, but they were still distracting to me.
Those 3 minor problems aside, I still think it was a really good film. It started out with one of my favorite chapters from the book ("Fire and Water") and we've been looking forward to that ever since Desolation of Smaug ended with the dragon flying straight to Lake Town. Then we got to see the White Council battling Sauron and his ringwraiths. After that there was some good character development, drama, and lots of action. The actors did a very fine job with their roles (especially Richard Armitage and Martin Freeman), and the visual effects were stunning. Overall, I enjoyed this return to Middle- Earth and I thank Peter & Company for what they've done with the entire Middle-Earth Saga.