Slightly ironic that a story about overbearing greed was padded out to a cash-grabbing 3 movies

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2015)

Battle of The Five Armies has all the faults of the first two films, and fans of the book will probably hate the changes and many of the stupid plot points added by Peter Jackson and his writers. It's just a glittery cgi-creature that feels nothing like the book.
There are pretty hefty extrapolations from the source material, including a worm-tongue like comedy character who proved a bit distracting to the main story, and a superhero Legolas who ridiculously jumps off a pile of falling stones on a bridge to save himself, and who hitches a silly bat ride to rescue Tauriel. Bilbo is also still a lost figure, but Martin Freeman, excellent as ever, is still a great Bilbo.
Five Armies is also a little derivative of The Return Of The King film, too, but on the whole is a less than satisfactory conclusion. My unpractised eye detects an awful lot of stuff has been edited out - so expect a whopper extended edition.
Christopher Lee's action Saruman is a bit of an eye-opener! The scene where he features is actually an acceptable adaption of the appendices material, even if said scene isn't actually in the the appendices! I thought the Dol Guldur stuff the best scene in the film. Billy Connolly also turns up as Dain Ironfoot. He's lively but almost unrecognisable in the Dwarf makeup and the material he's given isn't particularly funny.
So while the movie, and trilogy as a whole, doesn't come anywhere near the Lord Of The Rings movies in quality, it's not quite the turkey some would have you believe. Not Tolkien but reasonably passable fan fiction. It's still a cash-grab, though