The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Well the title says it’s the war of the five armies and Peter Jackson’s last installment in the Hobbit series, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has too much of battle in its 2 hours and 24 minutes duration. With our central protagonist getting very less share of significance, how much you will enjoy this movie will be highly dependent how long you can watch the wars engagingly before it starts to bore you.

The movie picks up from where it ended in the Desolation of Smaug and the dragon is in full anger and destroys the Lake Town with its flames. But Bard manages to kill Smaug and thus the mountain and its treasure becomes open to many people’s interest. Thorin is already there as he believes it belongs to him. The people of Lake Town have a plan to ask their share for shelter. Elf army and Azog’s army are also interested in the treasure and that opens up the scope for the big battle. How it happens and how it ends is what the last part of the Hobbit series all about.

The beginning of the movie is slightly swift and a bit dull. But it picks up a good rhythm towards the middle and Peter Jackson nicely builds the premise for the epic battle. The obsession of the treasure has made Thorin change drastically and that portions in the screenplay somewhere spoil the rhythm. Also the dwarf-elf love story is a bit of disturbance. Peter Jackson manages to bring back the excitement in the last one hour with some well executed war set pieces that has almost 5 different categories fighting. But as I said, watching just war alone for almost an hour can sometimes go into the boring phase. Mr. Jackson has tried to include certain small plot breaks here and there to make it less boring like the occasionally appearing character of Alfrid.

On screen, Martin Freeman has very less to do with his Bilbo Baggins this time and he was nice as the likeable dwarf. Luke Evans was the lead performer in this part of the saga and he did a very good job as Bard. Richard Armitage was nice as Thorin and the character had a different tone this time. Rest of the elaborate cast also did their part nicely.

Peter Jackson has tried his best to keep the war phase of the movie engaging, but still it was a bit too long. The script was a bit dull in the beginning as it was in a hurry to get into the war. Good visuals and nice use of CG. The 3D was waste. Background score was also nice.

Overall, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was a good movie that has certain hiccups. My rating is 3/5 for this one. Fans of the franchise should taste it.