Review: Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies'

The decision by Peter Jackson to expand JRR Tolkien's slim, trim novel The Hobbit into three movies was met with derision, and for very good reason. They all but guaranteed an extensive amount of filler and more of this new fellowship walking through grassy plains than ever. The first film was a crashing bore, the second film a marked improvement, and now with The Battle of the Five Armies we are treated to the final chapter of the trilogy and the first to meet the high quality standards of The Lord of the Rings. While the series as a whole doesn't quite measure up, Jackson deserves credit for wrapping up this massive fantasy epic on an incredibly high note.

Easily the best of the trilogy, Battle of the Five Armies is exactly what it promises to be: one mammoth war fought between every faction in Middle Earth. Picking up right where the last film left off with Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) setting Laketown ablaze, the heroic Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) races to find a way to ground the armored dragon.  If there was too much drag on the first two movies, 'Armies' is all gorgeously detailed action. Would it have been cool to see what another director could do with this world visually? Absolutely, but there's a comfort in the beautiful familiarity he brings to Middle Earth, and his ability to choreograph multiple battle sequences at a time is stunning.

While Laketown burns, what seems like a dozen other plots are playing out at elsewhere. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has discovered the dooming arrival of a darker evil threatening the land; while Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), and the company of dwarves are holed up in the Lonely Mountain reclaiming their lost treasure. True character arcs are few but Oakenshield gets the best one as he's torn between greed and leading his people. Bilbo's arc was completed mostly in the second film as he became more than just burglar, but he's important here as Oakenshield's conscience. With so many characters wrapped in prosthetics and make-up it's easy to take the acting for granted, but Armitage and Freeman are both excellent. Meanwhile, the other dwarves remain mostly interchangeable and indistinguishable, with the exception of Kili (Aidan Turner) who is memorable only for his romance with the elf, Turiel (Evangeline Lilly). Even that is handled with efficiency and a little bit of sweetness which shines through in the midst of the raging war surrounding it.

And let's talk about that war because it encompasses almost 60% of the movie, if not more. Jackson has never spared any expense in crafting his special effects budget but he really outdid himself this time.  Again pushing the limits of CGI technology, every disgusting orc, mountain range, and glittery elf looks exquisite. Tolkien himself would be in awe of what Jackson has been able to accomplish. With so many characters and plot threads weaving in and out of the fighting, there's also the need to connect with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While that connection is definitely forced on occasion, we don't see a bunch of characters from the other films shoe-horned in where they don't belong, a problem faced by predecessors. Running at only 2 hours and about 20 minutes, this is the shortest and briskly-packed film of the bunch. There's simply not a lot of standing around this time, and even if the final battle stretches on a bit too long it never gets boring.  The humor doesn't always work, like with the aggravatingly duplicitous "Alfrid" character, but it's a welcome presence in what is basically a fantastical war movie.  That we care so much about these characters and their connections to one another speaks to the richness of Tolkien's vision but also Jackson's ability to fully realize it.

Now that it's all said and done, The Hobbit will certainly go down as inferior to The Lord of the Rings by comparison, but so what? They should be taken as a complete whole, one that reaches incredible heights of imagination and technical precision. Jackson will probably never do anything as big as this again (although we've said that before!), but he's left a mark with these films that can never be erased.

 Rating: 4 out of 5