The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies:
After the events of the last film, Smaug is violently angry with the company of dwarves, and vows to show them what true vengeance is by destroying Laketown. Shortly after this, Bard the Bowman becomes the leader of the inhabitants as they trek across the land in search of a new home. Thorin Oakenshield seems content with staying in his new underground kingdom, although Bilbo and the company of dwarves begin to worry about his deteriorating mental state. The people of Laketown, the elves of the woods, Thorin's cousin Dain, Gandalf the Grey, and Azog the White Orc all commence at the entrance to the Lonely Mountain to confront Thorin, all of the parties wanting something: Dain wants to help his cousin, Bard and the people of Laketown want the compensation Thorin promised, the wood elves want their ancestral gems back, and the orcs and trolls simply want to kill everyone else. This is where the titular battle begins.
To be honest, despite the awesomeness of this movie, I'm not sure I was quite as satisfied with this movie I was expecting. After the last film, which was inarguably the best of this new trilogy, this just felt like a step down, in both story quality and run-time.
The main cast, featuring Martin Freeman, Sir Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch (briefly), Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Evangeline Lilly, Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman, Graham McTavish, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Sylvester McCoy, Manu Bennett, William Kircher, John Tui, Billy Connolly, Ryan Gage, John Bell, Stephen Fry, and many others, are all satisfactory, and Freeman is undoubtedly the best choice for Bilbo, being able to be slightly uptight, but also brave and very likable. McKellen is still perfect as Gandalf, with Armitage being slightly more sinister as Thorin in this film, but ultimately still a hero the audience can get behind. Cumberbatch, despite his role being significantly toned down, has a terrific villain voice, which elevates his roles as both Smaug and Sauron the Necromancer, and has them sticking with you after the film, despite being borderline cameo appearances.
Peter Jackson's direction is masterful, as always. He is obviously in love with Tolkien's work, and is very dedicated to capturing the spirit of the original novels. The cinematography by Andrew Lesnie is breathtaking and sweeping, as always. Some of the best in blockbuster cinema.
The action sequences are excellent, and although very comic booky/video game-esque, they still are very entertaining, well-paced and creative. The fact that the battle takes up the majority of the runtime should discourage any people complaining that the movie was boring or took too long getting to the action. My only real problem is that sometimes the action scenes go on for so long it can be overwhelming, and that the Hobbit movies have far more CGI than necessary. Part of the charm of Lord of the Rings was that the CGI was used only when necessary and that most of the orc and creature effects were done through practical effects, which made them look more terrifying, as opposed to the really clean-cut looking orcs seen in this film, which are motion-capture performed.
My other major complaint with the film as a whole is that the cliffhanger from the previous film is resolved so quickly it begs the question- why didn't they just include that bit at the end of the previous film? I understand they wanted to end the last movie on a stinger, but now that builds up a sense of anticipation over the year where I'm waiting and waiting to see how awesome the fight with the dragon will be, and then they just sort of resolve it withing the first ten minutes. The other problem is that, despite the battle being really cool, it really served no purpose other than to have an excuse to release a third film. The battle isn't in the books, as far as I know, and ultimately the battle ends in a Pyrrhic victory for the heroes (but I won't give away how). There's also too much going on in the film, where it seems like the writers forgot certain things. For one, certain characters disappear and are never seen or heard from again, and certain plotlines and character motives disappear altogether. I guess I'll have to wait for the extended Blu-ray release.
One of the worst aspects of the film is the constant call-backs to the previous film. It's not subtle at all, it's mostly done through obvious voice overs and flashbacks, which are usually to hammer a point in when the audience could easily figure things out for themselves. There's even callbacks to things that were explicitly stated minutes, sometimes even only a few moments, before. It almost seems the filmmakers didn't think the audience was smart enough to figure things out themselves, which I thought was horribly annoying.
The music by Howard Shore is acceptable, with some slight hints of the Lord of the Rings theme, while also trying to do its' own thing. I was disappointed not to hear an ending theme song, like the last film ended on.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies may not be quite as epic a conclusion as say Return of the King. Its' not even quite as good as The Desolation of Smaug, but ultimately is a satisfying and thoroughly entertaining movie, despite being terribly flawed, slightly underwhelming as a whole, and kind of exhausting at times. It's a fair conclusion to the trilogy, and I'm glad I got to experience Middle-Earth one last time, so thank you, Peter Jackson for that. 3.8/5 stars.
(Image: Wikipedia)Edit, May 17, 2015: I was wrong about the battle not being in the book. It is, but not at the scale it is here, and some of the character motivations are differentm, and characters like Legolas and Tauriel (a character made up for the films) are not present.
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