The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) - Movie Review
I suppose the big question is - was it all worth it? Expanding such a short book into three, three hour (I'm presuming The Battle of the Five Armies' extended cut will be about that long) films? Well, the reason for this expansion of the book is mainly due to the book's style. A lot happens in terms of narrative across a few pages, but on screen to do it justice would take up a good half hour or so. The actual Battle of the Five Armies in the book is barely mentioned, with little detail, allowing director Peter Jackson to turn it into the next Battle of Helm's Deep.
Unsurprisingly, the battle is pretty epic in both scale and content, and its clear the production team knew what they were doing. Its not the biggest battle of the Middle-Earth films, but considering this is only chronologically half-way through the story, the film does the right thing of allowing the last battle in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to be the best out of the six films. That being said, the battle is absolutely fantastic and a treat to behold. Having seen the film in IMAX 3D, I cannot deny how brilliant it all was, and not just the battle, the film itself was nothing short of brilliant.
The cast are on top-form as always, although with this being the final film of this Hobbit trilogy, tears and shed and Martin Freeman, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans and Richard Armitage get their moments to really shine. The screenplay all works and the behind the scenes work is truly incredible. 
Its a shame that now after five previous films, the work of the crew on these films is almost forgotten as simply being "great as always". Its amazing how much hard work went into making this Middle-Earth Saga something special. Even if the book are re-adapted into films in the future, they will never be able to re-create the brilliant work of the crew of these films. The sheer attention to detail, the dedication and the sense that these people enjoy what they are doing, and are glad to be working on a production of such scale just makes the films so great. All the Visual FX look terrific, with Smaug being a highlight of the whole trilogy.
After a great, if a little disappointing score from The Desolation of Smaug, Howard Shore is able to flex his creative muscles and create possibly the best score of the trilogy. The familiar themes are all present and the music throughout the battles is awesome. I do miss the Misty Mountains theme from An Unexpected Journey, but I can't quite see its place in this installment. What's here is great work from Shore though, and he is on top form. The first track 'Fire and Ice' shows off just how brilliant a film composer he truly is. Oh, and Billy Boyd's song 'The Last Goodbye' is a good enough reason to stay through the credits.
However, this film is not without its bad. Despite having a much better pace this time around, with the story diving straight into the truly epic action and the build up to the titular battle, the film feels like its missing elements. Perhaps it isn't too noticeable at first, but there are quite a few characters who barely appear or get no closure - Thranduil, Tauriel, Radagast, Beorn, Bard and his family and Alfred (who gets a little too much screen time in this film for my liking) get pretty much no closure, especially as all of these characters do not appear in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. For all those expecting three-hundred ending like Return of the King, you will be disappointed. Its got a more fluent ending than Return of the King, but misses closure to many characters. Even the surviving dwarves of Erebor are just sort of...left.Its not too big a problem in the grand scheme of things. The good more than outweighs the bad, but its a flaw nonetheless with the film.
If this truly is the final Middle-Earth film, its a great one to go out on, even if this wasn't the best. Overall:
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