Good action movie, bad Tolkien movie.

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2014)

Battle of five armies is by no means a bad movie, but making a battle over hour long based on few pages does not work perfect. The movie is called The Hobbit, but our dear Bilbo does not get enough screen time in this final installment, Legolas who was not even in the book gets even more. Of course it shows how Bilbo tries to prevent the war, but during the war Bilbo is not seen much.
The beginning is nearly perfectly done with Smaug attacking lake town, even if the scene with Bard shooting him is a bit stupid. Thranduil's arrival to Erebor is beautiful made and Thorins sickness of gold shows good but is maybe a bit dragged on. It is the battle itself which drags the points down a bit for me. Yes it was awesome to see Thorins cousin arrive with dwarfs into battle, but the orcs made with special effects was not that frighting and the battle got never the same feeling as for example the battle of Minas Tirith.
In this great battle where thousands fought we will see many scenes focused just on Thorin or Legolas fighting hundreds of orcs alone, why are these elite warrior orcs so bad in fighting? I don't get it and where are other dwarfs who could have helped Thorin and Legolas?
Last too some strange parts in the movie: Thranduil to Legolas go and seek Aragorn, wait what? Aragorn is not even born yet. The whoule part with Sauron is so unnecessary. His return in Lord of the Rings was meant to be a big surprise and does not need any preparing story. Only good thing with this extra from Jackson was that we got too see Saruman one more time. For me the love between Tauriel and Kili is not so big problem, even if the movie had done fine without it.
After all the movie includes some beautiful scenes with landscape and interesting battle scenes, but focuses too much time on 3-4 characters. Is it faithful to Tolkien? No. Is it a good action movie? Yes.