A fairly good ending to the Hobbit

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2015)

Rating-7/10
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is an end to the Hobbit film series and a pretty decent film to finish. Yes for me it was kind of good but did well to end it all and bring to a close a good but mixed reaction film series. It's a tad rushed along the way and the special effects are in overdrive at certain moments but nevertheless as I mentioned I felt it to be fairly good and here below is just why so.
Now the action in this movie is truly thrilling, it is massive and I mean that with the fighting providing most of the running time of 144 minutes. Now with the fighting we see in films like the Hobbit and of course fellow Middle Earth connected Lord of the Rings, it is always fantasy battles at it's very highest, and that is what you get here. You can't make up some things you see here and this all coming from the mind of Tolkein and the people behind the movie makes this one crazy kind of finale.
The cast give it a good go and it is true to say no one character seems to be in more than others, there are a lot of people involved here. Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins is kind of OK if not a little subdued and for some reason he actually doesn't feature that much surprisingly. Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage and Orlando Bloom among others do an OK job and although they excel when acting with true dramatic moments, the less said about the fighting the better, in fact no one here can make the fighting seem un-cringe worthy at times.
I feel without good directing this could have completely fallen apart so all credit to Peter Jackson for handling the reigns with a firm but not a strong grip. He seems to make this movie just a little more exciting and the way in which the battles are fought are just magnificently done at times. Now the adapted script is OK but not great, it has some of the more cheesy lines here and there and it is very much up and down, but what it does do is finish this off how it feels it should be, with that same Middle Earth feel it always needs.
The effects are truly top of the range and the one's used here are in my opinion the best movies can do these days with technology in this film being kind of mind blowing. I think although the effects are great and all, it doesn't mind showing off a little and some moments will make you think whether that was CGI or it was not, kind of confusing. The epic scale of the effects is also used to it's full extent and I think the producers really wanted this to be the crowning glory of design.
Now with such a long running time you can't expect for one this review to be one paragraph, but also you can't expect it not to fit everything in. But, for some strange reason they do seem to rush scenes and that is evidentially there within the first say 20 minutes which if you haven't seen, well you will see what I mean.
Overall I felt it was more than OK as a movie and one definitely worth a watch. It was the kind of movie that probably needs to be seen on the big screen to get the full effects but nevertheless this is a fine renting or streaming etc film to watch. Maybe this is the end of Middle earth in cinema and maybe this is capping off two decades of fantasy movies, or maybe just maybe there is still more to come.