The Lord of the Rings universe is my entire childhood. I remember reading the books, watching The Fellowship of the Ring everyday when it came out on DVD, and most of all I remember that glorious New Year’s Eve 2003, spent in a movie theater with my father and sister watching The Return of the King. So naturally when The Hobbit was announced, I was pretty excited and damn happy. Unfortunately, the first two movies didn’t really fulfill my expectations and left me rather disappointed. My first thought about the third and last movie, after more than an hour and a half into it, was that it was just as disappointing as the others. And then the last 40 minutes of the movie happened and changed a lot of things.
First things first, The Battle of the Five Armies is the last installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy and brings the incredible journey of Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield ’s company of dwarves to an end.
Let’s begin with the bad here, shall we? I believe the first mistake of The Battle of the Five Armies was to begin on Smaug’s attack. It would have been a better choice to put it at the end of the previous movie. Placed at the beginning, the action was already all up in my face before I was able to react, and when finally I got into the action, it was over. It breaks the movie in two, feels rushed and it is disorienting.
What came after wasn’t all that good either, and for a solid hour after Smaug’s defeat, I felt nothing. I really couldn’t get into the movie, I was watching it without feeling anything for anyone. It got worse with the battle scenes, that are completely emotionless, but I think I’ll have to blame the overuse of CGI for this one, seriously, too much. It lacks the depth of the battles in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it left me quite frustrated.
Talking about frustrating things, I want to stop one minute on the scene at Dol Guldur, or any scenes in the previous movies dealing with the Necromancer. Those scenes, in my opinion, were poorly handled and useless. I only see them as time fillers, as if they just wanted to give some very famous actors some screen time. It doesn’t even set, explain, or serve the story in any way. It doesn’t do anything that The Lord of Rings hadn’t already settled in The Fellowship of the Ring. It really angered me. I don’t mind the added characters, added plotlines, or anything that was added and that wasn’t in The Hobbit, that’s all fine; but when they chose to change things or show something under a different light, or in this case explain Gandalf’s disappearances, they better make it meaningful and useful! 
On a brighter side, The Battle of the Five Armies went from emotionless to full-on emotional, when Thorin finally decided to join the battle. I still don’t quite understand what came over me, but I was weeping from this point up to the very end of the credits. In between the death scenes -including Kili, Fili and Thorin, that completely broke my heart, the realisation that it is very probably the last movie talking about this universe, and the music, I was a complete wreck. Funny how even if you’ve read the books and you know what’s about to go down, you’re still crying like a baby!
The cast did a great job and it really was a satisfactory end. When Billy Boyd’s “The Last Goodbye” started, I was crying but I was also happy. First because I’ve been a fan of Beecake for many years, so I love Billy’s voice, and that song is just so beautiful, and because this is the end, the last part of our epic journey through The Lord of Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
I’ll definitely place The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in the “So-So Movies with beautiful ends” category. Even if I have to go through the entire first part of the film, I’ll definitely go and see it again, just for that end. So I still recommend it, as it is a great end to an epic tale.
Rating: 3.5/5
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