Concluding the second trilogy set in the Lord of the Rings universe, the question is: does The Battle of Five Armies provide a satisfying conclusion to The Hobbit trilogy. Added to this, there is the added pressure of providing a conclusion that lives up to the previous Lord of the Rings trilogy. Under all this pressure, The Hobbit unfortunately buckles, often feeling bloated and full of pointless action sequences while missing the emotional investment necessary to make the action sequences worthwhile.
The Battle of Five Armies picks up where the previous Hobbit movie lets off, with the dwarves awakening the dragon and failing to kill it, setting it on a rampage on the human settlement close by. Gandalf has also just been captured by the Necromancer and an army of Orcs is ready to march upon the good people of middle earth. Add into this an army of elves and dwarves coming to try and claim the treasures in Smaug's horde, it appears as if all the pieces are in place for a grandiose conclusion to The Hobbit Trilogy.
And this is where the movie begins to fall over. With a rampaging dragon serving as the prologue and the titular Battle of Five Armies, this movie has allot of action. It begins with the dragon fight, with Smaug rampaging through the human settlement. This battle scene starts the movie on the right path, as the characters and emotional investment has been established from the previous movies. After this, we have Elrond, Saruman and Galadriel stage a rescue of Gandalf and defeat of the Necromancer which is also really cool.
And then there is a giant lull in the action as we are teased with a possibility of the dwarves fighting the elves and humans, which we know is never going to happen. This part is meant to establish the characters involved in the final battle and their internal struggles, but it just feels bloated. And that is exactly how the final battle feels. The Orcs never feel as a threat as main characters just seem to go through them like a hot knife through butter. It doesn't help that most of the main battle sequences are concluded off screen. This is because the movie often focuses on individual characters that we don't care about. This movie feels like it goes out of its way to show how cool all there characters are as opposed to showing the characters and the battles progress more naturally.
This is a movie that the Lord of the Rings production crew seems to have used to take a victory lap of showing characters being cool and pandering to them. It tries to do major battle sequences, but it never feels like the characters are in any danger. Compared to Return of the King with its tighter focus and much more engaging battle sequences, the Battle of Five Armies feels like an unsatisfying conclusion to the Hobbit trilogy. Even as a standalone movie, it feels like an over bloated action movie that is ineffective in establishing an emotional connection with the audience which is only saved by a couple of cool sequences towards the beginning of the movie.
2 out of 5 Dragon-toasted Waffles.
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