A Worthy, if Flawed, Finale

Rating: 6/10 (12 December 2014)

I put my hand up as one of the minority that actually supported the idea of three movies. More Middle Earth the better, especially if it's padded out with loads of extra background information and sets up the events of Lord of the Rings. By Desolation of Smaug, I had changed my mind. It was full of unnecessary scenes that could well have been cut, and the cliffhanger at the end needed resolution. So how did this extra third film pan out?
Still a mixed bag if I'm honest. The first ten minutes are the last ten minutes of what Desolation of Smaug should've been. It brings closure to that movie enabling us to carry on with this one. If I had good enough video editing software and skills, I'd seriously consider splicing it back into Desolation for future enjoyment, making it a complete movie with a beginning, middle, and end. Anyway, this means Battle of Five Armies has an end, a beginning, a middle, and another end. It's too much, especially seeing as it's already pretty much a two hour fight scene. Adding another fight scene in at the beginning means you're tired of the destruction by the time we actually get to the meat of the movie.
That's not to say there's no plot though. There's certainly enough, even if it does take up the whole first act. Thorin is driven mad by the riches he has won back, and his obsession with the arkenstone leaves him in a dark place. Meanwhile news has spread and the humans, elves, and orcs all want a piece of the mountain for one reason or another. Away from all that we revisit Gandalf and the White Council has they finally discover the identity of the Necromancer (spoiler, it's Sauron). This particular scene was probably the highlight for me as it teased much deeper concepts and mythology surrounding Middle Earth. Once all this is out the way though, it's literally two hours of these five armies fighting each other. Well all right, that's a bit of an exaggeration as the third act completely leaves the battle behind (and I mean completely, while it's still raging in the background) to focus on the more personal struggle between Thorin and Azog, and each of the entourages. After that's all dealt with, we rush to an end to bridge the two trilogies together, leaving more than a handful of loose ends (like, what happened to all the gold they were fighting over for the entire movie?)
There's a lot of other things that annoyed me about Battle of Five Armies as well. Unfortunately the cringeworthy Kili/Tauriel romance is carried over and reaches peak cringe. Why Jackson thought that was a good idea is completely beyond me. Similarly the movie is plagued by Alfrid, who you may or may not remember as the Master of Lake Town's right-hand man. Why he gets any focus at all is completely beyond me. He should've been forgotten, or at least saved for the Extended cut. The film's biggest sin, however, was the constant last-minute-saviour. Seriously, take a shot every time someone got saved at the last minute and you'd be paralytic by the halfway point. When I say it's constant, I'm honestly not exaggerating. Almost every one-on-one battle ends with one, and there's a lot of one-on-one battles, often happening simultaneously. To balance it out there are a few deaths of main characters, but they're shocking only because you've gotten so used to saviours swooping in all the time.
The visuals are unsurprisingly amazing, and in much the same vein as the previous Hobbit films. It can get a bit much here and there, but overall I didn't find it got in the way of enjoyment of the film at all. The highlight of the effects were undoubtedly the pre-Ringwrath bearers of the nine rings of men. Never have I seen ghosts/spirits put to film so believably. They're clear and see- through, and yet definitely present; they're detailed and identifiable. I think the 3D helped them come alive as well, not because of the 3D, but because of the side effect you often get where text gets a subtle blurred shadow behind it. In this instance it actually benefited from that side effect.
Acting was also pretty top-notch. Martin Freeman absolutely owns it. He's the same Bilbo he's always been, but he brings much more depth this time around, especially when he mourns the death of a certain character. I wasn't feeling particularly sad about it until his grieving, and then I was like 'damn, that's actually really sad. Poor Bilbo'. His extra little nuances are completely on point. Richard Armitage was also pretty great, especially as he got to play around with Thorin's darker side. We really did see another dimension, not just of Thorin's character, but also of Armitage's acting. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of him in the future. Also Ian McKellan, Cate Blanchet, Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, and Christopher Lee, no matter how big or small their roles, show us why they're the veterans.
The Battle of the Five Armies is a worthy closure to The Hobbit trilogy, but that's not saying a lot. I'm not a big naysayer of the trilogy, as I quite enjoyed aspects of every movie (and have rated them accordingly), but none of them hold a flame up to even the weakest of the Lord of the Rings movies. As enjoyable as they are, there's just too many things wrong with them. I give The Battle of the Five Armies a good, but not amazing 7/10.