A Thundering Conclusion of an Overall Disappointing Trilogy.

Rating: 6/10 (15 December 2014)

Peter Jackson's self-aggrandizing attempt to bloat a simple children's story to an epic fantasy tale in three parts culminates in an overlong battle scene only to puff out in mediocrity and stereotypes.
If the director chose to stay truth to the source material and left out all this fillers, he could have made an unique movie that consists only of two parts at the utmost and more importantly stands on its own instead of having this "spin-off"-character of LOTR: why trying to copy and even surpass a legendary trilogy that was designed as such from the very beginning by inventing a kind of "prequel" based on a thin bedtime story that doesn't come even close to LOTR in every respect? Is Peter Jackson paying homage to Tolkien or just to himself as the master of battle choreography?
"The Hobbit" was written first, so it's per definition not a prequel, it just happens to play before the events of LOTR, all this references in the movie are simply redundant and serve no other purpose than to satisfy a vain fan nostalgia, it has nothing to do with any real artistic ambitions. it's the pure exploitation of a franchise that comes along with the latest CGI technology. "The Battle of Five Armies" is worth seeing from a technical point of view since the visuals are topnotch, the little, poor rest of the plot that wasn't managed to be finished in the previous parts is somehow pressed in between the fights.
Let's face it, LOTR is far better.