Epic Conclusion Stretched to Two Hours

Rating: 6/10 (1 January 2015)

To be fair, I have not read "The Hobbit" but I don't think 300 pages can easily translate into 8 hours on the silver screen. While "Battle of the Five Armies" delivers in spectacle and action, it officially proves once and for all that there was no need to make a trilogy out of a story that could have been a good two and a half hour blockbuster.
The film picks up where Desolation of Smaug (the best of The Hobbit trilogy) left off, with the titular dragon reigning fire over poor Laketown. The dragon voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch was by far the best thing about the previous installment, so much so that I kind of wished Peter Jackson fudged the story a bit to give him more screen time.
Once the beast has been slain, the massive amount of gold at Erebor is now up for grabs, making the Dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield greedy to the point of insanity. He would rather choose war over peace if that means keeping his gold and title he feels rightfully belongs to him. It is during these scenes, particularly this one hallucination sequence that work the best during the film.
For the most part the film is just one massive climax of battle scenes that are well done, though I can't say I haven't seen better. Like in any climax of the movie all the characters and subplots come together, particularly romances. This particular one between Tauriel and a dwarf feels a bit out of place in the saga like it exists just because Jackson felt that there needed to be a romantic subplot. It also gets in the way of the story's main focus.
Speaking of which, looking back I was amazed a little Hobbit there was in the actual movie. What exactly does Bilbo do in the final chapter? Not much really. The film has other characters to focus on.
While watching I was reminded of Game of Thrones episode "Watchers on the Wall". That was an action-packed hour of television that somehow felt much more emotionally satisfying than this movie. And that wasn't even the series finale.
The film of course looks impressive but while the original "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was filmed on location in New Zealand (and looks like it) the Hobbit trilogy uses so much CGI that at times it actually looks like a Pixar film. It's like Jackson believed that the first trilogy was burdensome enough to make, so lets just use CGI.
I will certainly give the movie this however, Peter Jackson made a smart decision not to bombard us with a half hour of false endings like in "Return of the King". The series is already long enough as it is.