The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies 2014

More so than either of the other Hobbit films, the titular character is virtually a supporting player in the film and, whilst in the previous two films, the expansion of the book did not overwhelm the central story it was based on, it is here that Jackson's desire to frame this trilogy as a prequel to the Lord of the Rings is far more prominent. Perhaps the lack of material left to cover from the book is the reason for this ( the rousing opening sequence held back for this film would clearly have played equally well as a finale to the previous entry ). As an adaptation of the tone and focus of the book, this is as far removed as you could get and it is evident that two films would have been more than sufficient. There is equally a sense of déjà vu in some scenes in the build-up to the battle that is reminiscent of Return of the King.

Yet the book is its own thing and as a film and finale to the previous entries, this is a fitting conclusion and a largely successful segue into his Rings films. Importantly, the elements that are from the book itself are the strongest part of the film - Freeman again is excellent as Bilbo and his scenes with Armitage as Thorin are certainly the best and most emotional moments. This is as much Thorin's film as anyone else and the resolution to his arc is well handled. Despite initial similarities to the finale of his Rings trilogy, this becomes less of an issue as the film progresses and Jackson manages to create a near hour long action sequence that never becomes confusing or repetitive. If there is a one criticism that stands out, it is that some characters are lost amidst the sheer number fighting for screen time, but this has been evident throughout the Hobbit films, especially with the Dwarves, and Jackson wisely chooses to keep the focus on those characters that made a impression in the previous instalments. Elements that tie the films more closely to the Rings trilogy are cleverly done, even though they do feel a little episodic in nature, with cameos from characters that play a much more prominent role there. Jackson's decision to include Legolas and create a new character in Tauriel may annoy book fans, but it has a strong emotional pay off here and serves as an interesting personal backdrop to the character of Legolas. If nothing else, it is fun to see Jackson create another action beat for the character. The film is beautifully shot throughout and Jackson's penchant for sweeping camera moves capture the stunningly realised environment.

Equally, it is difficult to review this film without looking at it now in the greater context of the six film saga that it has become, and this is some achievement for Jackson to have accomplished. Fellowship of the Ring remains the strongest film ( and fittingly it is probably the one that sticks the closest to the original story ). But, Jackson has created a series of films that will be the benchmark for future fantasy films and this final entry can hold its own with the rest.

HUGE Lord of The Rings fan here again!
I think this one was the best one in the trilogy, I do have some things that I didn't like but overall this is a great movie..
The positive points:
Thorin and his friendship with Bilbo, I loved the performances by both actors and the final scene between them actually made me tear up, it was so well done and also Thorin's "dragon-sickness" was well done. Dwalin's conversation with Thorin was great (Dwalin was amazing!)
All the other performances are amazing.
Seeing Galadriel, Saruman and "badass" Elrond was cool, it was cool to see how powerful Galadriel was ( she was creepy but cool), and forgive me for being a fangirl but Elrond fighting was way too beutiful!
I really liked the battle, I liked the music, I loved the first 15 minutes with Smaug it was short but absolutely awesome and Bard was actually awesome.
The end credit song (The Last Goodbye by Billy Boyd) is a beautiful song and I loved it. It did have many other good stuff that I can't mention.
The negative points:
That romance was still pointless ( Legolas being friendzoned for a "hot" dwarf is just weird)
The CGI is still heavy and does look too fake at times.
The runtime is still very long, but have to say it was way better than the first 2 movies.
the character of "Alfrid" should just NOT EXIST!
Legolas just HATES Physics !
but overall it was a beautiful movie that did tie beautifully with LOTR in the end!

Okay, can I just say being a fan of both The Lord of the Rings and The hobbit, In my humble opinon this trilogy actually added depth and background to anyone whoever watched The Lords of The Rings Trilogy.
Being obviously a star packed movie, the movie did not fail to deliver a much anticipated final chapter taking into consideration the shitty ending of the second part. I simply could not wait.
Running for 144 Minutes meaning almost 2.4 hours, I was not the least bored..

I related to many of the characters but I loved the sense of family provided by the Dwarves through out their journey..
Some characters on the other hand impressed me more than others..

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins: Well, the big eyed actor as always makes it impossible for anyone not to love him or worry about him through out any work he does..

Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield II: Not only did I totally respect him as a character, my favourite quote from the movie is by him.. He portrays a character that makes it impossible for you not to respect, love, and care for him and on the other hand you simply can not help but relate to him on so many levels..

Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug the Magnificent: Well, as always Cumberbatch amazed me with what he could do with just his voice. He made me want to reach out and strangle the crap out of him through out the second and the third part..
How talented do an actor need to be to portray all that with just his voice.. is BEYOND ME!

Last but definitely not least, I titled my hat once again to the amazing work of Mr. Howard Leslie Shore, But coming from the guy behind the scores of:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Gangs of New York (2002)

and many more, you really can not expect any less..

On more thing, I know 3D is over-rated with most of the movies but Go and see it in Theatre guys.. It really is worth it..

Visually striking as always, but lacking in many ways. While the pacing was actually good and you never feel bored, there was essentially no story to follow at all. The armies meet and fight - that's all there is to it.

There's no build up to the fight, no preparation, and the main characters have power beyond reason - see Legolas jumping the falling rocks when he was fighting the orc that had Tauriel. He's an elf, but he's not gravity proof as far as I remember.

Thorin was a such a powerful character and he went underdeveloped, as honestly did Bilbo and Galadriel at least. I like the attention Thranduil, Kili, Legolas and Tauriel got, but Thorin's epiphany was an important moment and it was actually kinda hurried.
It was a fun watch for sure, but I have a hard time accepting this as a stand-alone film. It was more like a very long battle shot that could have been put as an extra in a deluxe edition of the DVD.

I must definitely say I enjoyed The Hobbit as a trilogy, but I wish they had edited it somewhat differently. I think it still has a lot of potential if someone decided to make a different cut out of it.

7/10
Not as good as the second part of the movie that was just the best and the pacing was awesome.
This just began to bore me a little. It was so stretched out into one long well nothing really. And don't get me started how quickly they took that Dragon out...."really"...really.....
And that drawn out battle at the end started to get boring, and in
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
them battles are phenomenal and epic and exciting and a truly an amazing spectacle to behold and something I can never get enough of.
The battle in this was just Meh....and just seamed to drag on and on and on and on. I've never been a lover of dwarfs and their going-on's I just don't find them all that entertaining so watching my Hobbit extended cut unrated with all parts over 3h,
3H 43m I really had to grind the last part out.
I love the Elves they are definitely the best part in this universe and steal every scene, the are so cool and interesting and I've said all along it should be all about them, are at least have a spin-off about them. I could sit through a trilogy watch their story no problem. They are way more awesome than dwarfs.

With that being said the second half of this part of the movie was the better part and things picked up then dragged but still it nearly stopped in the first part the pacing was that off. I'm glad people died it needed that after all that silly unbelievable surviving especially in that last dragged out battle.
All in all job done which brings us nicely into
TLOTR my favourite which I will be start the ultra extended edition at 5H and 6H a piece with the running time wow...just..wow.
Proper Epic bring it on.

X FINAL THOUGHT:
The Hobbit brings us to Middle Earth and is a perfect start to the MASTERPIECE that is
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
so for that it has my love and respect and as a part of the greater hole it's Frickin awesome and
One Hella of an Awfully
Big Adventure.

Time to say goodbye to middle earth for the last time.

The story is about Dwarven party led by Thorin Oakenshield finally reclaims their kingdom of Erebor, the vast treasure draws out now only the wrath of Smaug but also the army of men and elves, who want the fortune for their own.

Let me give you a quick feed back of the other two films then to this one. "A unexpected Journey" I thought was pretty amazing... when I first sawed it, after a couple of watchers later it's not as amazing as the first time, but I still enjoyed it even with the problems showing. "Desolation of Smaug" (in my opinion) was way better and way more fun and better paste than "Unexpected Journey", and Smaug as the villain was icing on the cake. Now we got "Battle of the Five Armies" and I can conform that the movie is actually pretty good and it's a solid finale to The Hobbit series.

Peter Jackson directs this movie in a way that middle earth feels like a real pace that we can go to anytime we want and I got to give him that. Jackson clearly adores middle earth as he really doesn't want it to end and I can see why. It probably makes him feel at home directing these movies and sometimes leaving you home behind sucks.

The visual effect's at times looked really good and once again this movie had that shiny mix with grey color with the character's Armour and the background of beautiful New Zealand. But I like the Lord of the Rings effect's a little better, why you may ask, because the effect's in that movie still holds up today but that's just me... maybe.

All the cast did a outstanding job. Ian Mckellen will always be Gandalf, Martian Freeman did a fantastic job playing Bilbo Baggins and to be honest I like Bilbo Baggins more then frodo in my opinion.

My biggest problems with the film is some of the visual effect's in the movie looks very noticeable and I had the same problem with the other two films. The love story between Kili (the Dwarf) and Tauriel (the Elf), didn't find their romance plot to really needed for the film and when something bad happens to the two of them I just sitting thinking "Well stuff happens".

Overall rating: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies is a solid final to the Hobbit series with some problems there and then. Good action scenes, good performances and a brutal fight scenes.

Peter Jackson finishes with Middle Earth, again, six films and well over a thousand minutes of screen time after he began. It should go without saying that Bilbo's last fight is over-extended, indulgent and often very slow - at this point, those have become LOTR calling cards - but even amidst such expectations, this is a pretty big stretch. There's just so little real substance here, especially after the ferocious dragon Smaug is dismissed very early in the first act, that it feels like we're watching a medieval war reenactment and not a polished bit of Hollywood storytelling.

The cast gets plenty of linguistic work, with lots of tongue-twisting names and locations to murmur in a foreboding tone, and the screen dances with all manner of wild paperback-cover visuals, but it deeply hurts that there's so little plot. Even the battle scenes, large and loud as they are, suffer from a bad case of the Rambos. That was a problem I could generally overlook in The Two Towers, even when Legolas was single-handedly taking down herds of war elephants, but now by comparison that seems almost quaint. It doesn't matter how outnumbered our heroes may be, if they're involved in a fight you'd better believe a couple hundred baddies are about to lose their heads. Believability is already a tall ask here, and those fight scenes scrap any shred of disbelief that may have remained somewhat suspended.

It's a pantomime, a hopeless exaggeration that rambles on without point or purpose like a drunken Granddad after Thanksgiving dinner. There really, really didn’t need to be three of these.

After I have now seen the complete trilogy I must stick to what I said before. The movies themselves are great. The amount of work and dedication they put in is incredible. Althought the technical side is not magic anymore they look way better than almost anything at the time. But therin lies one of the problems. You just have to throw enough money at it to make it look the part. For LotR they had to invent the stuff and it was mesmerizing to watch. Nevertheless they are entertaining to watch even not knowing the book. Or maybe because of that. I cannot say for sure. But as I said about the first movies I never felt them. I didn´t connected to the characters or the story in any way. During LotR it felt almost like I was with them and at the end I had tears in my eyes and I sat there motionless for minutes after. That´s how intense I experienced it. With The Hobbit it was more like just another movie. But I admit that is a very personal point of view.

It reminds me of Star Wars. The first Trilogy was lights out. The prequel wasn´t bad but it just wasn´t the same magic.

I watched this and cannot help but compare LOTR with this trilogy and I just want to share some thoughts. I was not a fan of the hobbit as movies which is weird because I liked the book The Hobbit more than I liked reading LOTR and I think the main reason to this was the seriousness in the LOTR trilogy as books. Now when made into movies this Hobbit vibe was what first turned me off, you know the lightness in Bilbos mood and his story telling. It is a much lighter vibe and environment compared to the LOTR.

However now when I watch the LOTR and see Jackson's take on the characters and mainly the difference he portray between Bilbos and Frodos story telling with all the details from Frodo saying to Bilbo in Rivendell in LOTR that "I'm not like you Bilbo" I think that the difference in the mood and vibe of the movies is quite brilliant! In the bigger picture the moods in the movies capture the mood of Bilbo vs Frodo. Bilbo is more of the classic Hobbit while Frodo is kind of the ugly duckling of a Hobbit.

The hobbit is told from Bilbos perspective with a lighter mood and not the same seriousness because that's not who Bilbo is. He is that bright character with a sense of humor even in dark times and throughout the entire trilogy of hobbit not even 1% of it come close to the dark vibe that's over the majority of the LOTR. The LOTR was written and told by Frodo and he is a much more serious character that tend to fall into despair and only keeping his chin up because he had Sam by his side.

All in all, the Hobbit trilogy when I don't expect a LOTR vibe and can watch it in a Bilbo perspective and not expecting a Frodo perspective end up being really enjoyable movies and I've already watched the trilogy four times. I wish I could ask Jackson about his idea with the Hobbit vs LOTR because to me he did a fantastic job capturing Bilbos character and story telling in the entire movies and I for one in the beginning didn't appreciate the brilliance in that and expected a tale told by Frodo. I am not worthy Jackson! Not worthy :)

The second time is way better. I appreciate Jackson's focus of Thorin and his dragon illness. The battles, though filled with CGI, where better than any before, they had a lot more variation and this time they focused more on the individual fights instead of Legolas and Aragorn killing 300 orcs per minute (like in the first Hobbit movie).
I loved the Counsel fight scene, Saruman was badass. I also loved the connections to LotR, both with Legolas and the final heartwarming scene in Bag End.

The only things I regret are the death scenes, which were poorly handled in my opinion. One of the advantages The Hobbit had over LotR was the actual deaths of important characters, but here they felt kind of rushed and unimportant.

I really hope they include a longer ending in the extended edition, as most people will probably not recognize where Bilbo got the chest of gold from (the Troll cave), and also some kind of recognition of what the dwarves did after the battle (specially a mention to the expedition to Moria). Again, most people won't recognize the names of those who went to Moria.

At the end of the day, I'm just glad I got to experience 6 amazing films based on the best fantasy universe in literature, and I'm sad to see it end.

The final installment of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, sets out to tie up loose ends and provide a fitting conclusion to the saga. While it doesn't quite live up to the grand finale of Return of the King, it still delivers a satisfying ending to a trilogy that had its ups and downs. The film opens with a spectacular battle between Smaug and Lake Town, with impressive special effects and visual spectacle. However, with many plot points to wrap up, the editing is tight and some scenes feel rushed. The final battle is well-choreographed and engaging, with a clear distinction between the opposing forces. Unfortunately, most of the dwarves are underdeveloped and remain largely unknown. Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage deliver strong performances, driving the film from different perspectives. Overall, The Battle of the Five Armies provides a worthy ending to the Middle Earth saga, with epic battles and compelling characters.

La última entrega de la trilogía de la Tierra Media de Peter Jackson, La batalla de los cinco ejércitos, se propone atar los cabos sueltos y brindar una conclusión adecuada a la saga. Si bien no está a la altura del gran final de Return of the King, aún ofrece un final satisfactorio para una trilogía que tuvo sus altibajos. La película comienza con una batalla espectacular entre Smaug y Lake Town, con impresionantes efectos especiales y espectáculo visual. Sin embargo, con muchos puntos de la trama para concluir, la edición es apretada y algunas escenas se sienten apresuradas. La batalla final está bien coreografiada y es atractiva, con una clara distinción entre las fuerzas opuestas. Desafortunadamente, la mayoría de los enanos están subdesarrollados y siguen siendo en gran parte desconocidos. Martin Freeman y Richard Armitage ofrecen sólidas interpretaciones, conduciendo la película desde diferentes perspectivas. En general, La Batalla de los Cinco Ejércitos proporciona un final digno a la saga de la Tierra Media, con batallas épicas y personajes fascinantes.

I just saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and it was...good...

Everything was more or less well made on a technical level, and to the movie's credit, this one didn't seem as long as it actually is. But unsurprisingly, the film had a lot of pacing issues. Who would have thought that trying to turn the third act in a book into an entire movie might not flow so well? Now, I haven't seen The Desolation of Smaug since theaters last year, so when the opening a movie is the climax of an action scene from the previous movie, I found myself being not all that sucked into it. They were trying to sell me all this action, but there was no build up to it. Like, not even five minutes ago I was watching some shitty trailers for movies I don't care about.

I think we can all pretty much agree that The Hobbit should not have been three movies. One or two movies would have made sense; not only would it cut out a lot of the filler, but it would have allowed the cuts in between films to be a lot more appropriate. Now was it just me, or was Billy Connolly's face completely computer generated? If you don't know who that is, it was the dude riding a pig that sounded like Shrek. Every time it showed him it was like some Beowulf shit; characters next to him would look completely normal, but his face, for whatever reason, looked computer-generated.

Also, I get that Legolas is supposed to do some crazy bad-ass shit pretty much every movie, but this one felt a little too over the top. I mean, usually when Legolas has unrealistic ninja skills, I'm pretty okay with that, but in this one it was less of Legolas having ninja skills, and more of convenient physics just happening to play out in his favor. It was no longer a showcase of the character skill level, it was just "Oh, didn't that just happened to work out for you?" Yes there have been elements of convenient physics throughout the Lord of the Rings films before but this one pushed it a little too far.

It was a little weird how a small boat was able to tear off the wall of a prison. It was also a little weird how many opportunities the main Ork dude had to kill Thorin, but he just didn't take them. Like, every time he swung that stone attached to a chain at him, Thorin would fall over and have to regroup himself, but instead of taking the opportunity to finish him off with his sword arm, he's like, "Well, guess I gotta reel in this stone, so I can swing it at him again."

Also, what was up with those giant worms that cleared a tunnel to the battle but never actually fought in the battle? Like, they showed up, and they were super intimidating, and probably could have kicked some serious ass, but they kind of just left and I don't understand why. Like, I've never read the source material, so maybe that explains it, but why even turn a book into a movie if you have to read the book to understand the movie?

Am I the only person that didn't expect Smaug to die in the first 10 minutes? I knew he wasn't gonna be in the movie forever, but I expected him to be at least a significant part of it, and as someone that didn't read the book, I don't think my expectations were that unreasonable. When you have an entire ad campaign that features Smaug being interviewed on Stephen Colbert, it kinda implies that he'll be a significant character in the film. So when he dies at the very beginning of the movie, all it does is just show how poorly a place they decided to separate the second and third films. I'm sure even Peter Jackson would agree that the pacing would have worked better if they ended the second movie after Smaug dies. But unfortunately, their decisions are less about the movies and more about the money.If they ended the second film after Smaug dies, then they wouldn't have had a cliffhanger of "Oh, don't you wanna see this dragon battle?" You're consciously using the dragon as a selling point for the third film, despite the fact that he dies as soon as the film starts. Man, don't you wish we could go back to the days when our media was a bit more consumer-friendly? "It's okay if the movies are worse, as long as we make more money. Isn't that the whole point of making a movie in the first place?"

Anyway, despite these gripes with this film, I didn't consider it to be bad. It's just sad to think of how this source material could have been used to make something a lot better.Out of all three in the films, I would say that the second one is probably my favorite, so if I ever watch any of them again that will be it. As for this one, it was all right, but I can't ever imagine a time where I'll feel like watching it again. And I'm giving this one a 6 out of 10.