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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Movie Review

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is a 2014 epic fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson and starring Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage. It’s the worst entry in this series.

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“You have but one question to answer: How shall this day end?“

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Bilbo fights against a number of enemies to save the life of his Dwarf friends and protects the Lonely Mountain after a conflict arises. This trilogy went downward in terms of quality and ended with a whimper. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, but it still comes across as both overlong and unnecessary.

I did find the first half to be pretty solid. This is where the character development, emotional engagement and even some storytelling can be found. But that was all squandered on the second half’s insistence on huge action set pieces that just never end. It’s not as annoying as in the third LOTR movie, but it’s still frustrating in its chaotic nature.

I have to admit that a couple of close-range fights were superbly executed with the sword fights against Orcs faring best. They pleasantly reminded me of video games and they counteracted those horrible medieval war sequences very well. But speaking of gaming, unfortunately the VFX here plunged into video game territory.

Unlike the first movie, this one simply does not look like a feature film. It doesn’t look as if it had been shot on location in the first place. What it looks like is a full-on fantasy video game with overly bright and overused CGI and not enough believable scenery. Nothing looked real here, which rendered the flick uncinematic. The snowy landscapes were beautiful, but again more fitting the other aforementioned medium.

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Among the characters, Bilbo and Thorin got the best arcs in an otherwise almost plotless Battle of the Five Armies. Their arcs were moving and meaningful. But Gandalf, Legolas and everybody else got almost nothing to do, and Smaug himself was too easily defeated in the movie’s first well executed, but rushed sequence. The Orcs acted as intimidating villains, but the erupting war proved to be too noisy and uninteresting for me.

The Battle of the Five Armies ended The Hobbit trilogy with a whimper. While a couple of characters got their meaningful arcs and some of the action sequences were thrilling, most of the movie resorted to frustrating, never-ending background noise. It is a plotless, overlong and frenetic flick that also looks like a video game instead of a proper feature film due to an excessive use of CGI.

My Rating – 3