The Battle of Five Armies : Not A Single Movie

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2014)

If the Rings was a legendary and unbelievable trilogy of all times, then the Hobbit would a great and enjoyable trilogy that still satisfied the audience. The novel was written in the similar way. While the Rings requires more time commitment and vocabularies to read through, the Hobbit is more geared toward a younger audience (children and teens).
If I review the The Battle of the Five Armies as a single movie, I will point out a lot of flaws. The first would be the pace of the movie. For example, in the beginning of movie, Bard vs Smaug was way too fast. Peter Jackson gave Smaug an infinite amount of armor but a non-existent hitting points. From there, we can tell the second flaw of the movie - too much distortion in the fighting scene. The Orcs can only attack but has no defense ability. The Dwarfs suddenly have the fighting ability as Elves. And this leads to its third vital flaw - the fast change of character. I like how the Elf King and Tauriel changed in the end. However, how Thorin changed his mind was too suddenly that the audience would feel something was missing.
If I review the The Battle of the Five Armies as a conclusion of the Hobbit trilogy, these flaws I pointed out would make more sense and may not be viewed as flaws anymore. The movie created a suspense that was not really exited in the book. Without carrying away the main theme of this movie, The director has to limit the emphasis on Bard's fight with Smaug. The same goes with the change in Thorin. The director wants the five armies share the same development. It was a trade-off between showing Thorin thinking and arguing against himself alone for 10 minutes and developing the massive grand fight for 10 minutes. I would not blame the director to choosing the latter.
Lastly, the unrealistic fighting scene in the movie does not make the movie unreal. In my opinion, the ending in this trilogy was far more sorrow and realistic than the ending in Rings. Tauriel asked the Elf King why things ended this way, he provided a simple answer "because it was real." If an explanation is needed for all unrealistic scenes in the movie, we can find one before the very end. When Gandalf bade farewell to Bilbo, Gandalf said the fundamental of the whole trilogy "you don't really suppose that all your adventures were managed merely by luck, do you?"