The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armies - review

The Battle Of The Five Armies is a rather confusing title for the film because even though the eponymous battle takes up the majority of the film's runtime, at the end of it I am unable to tell you who the five armies were!

There were some dwarves, elves, orcs, mention of another Orc army that never show up, a small group of humans that would be difficult to classify as "an army" and then possibly even the Eagles.

Ah the bloody eagles! The Deus Eagle Machina that turns up whenever everything seems bleak in order to help out but ended up reminding us all of that question "why didn't they just drop the ring in Mount Doom?".

The biggest problem with The Hobbit films is that by expanding the story over three films and trying to work in more material to tie it in to the LOTR movies, it feels like a cheap cardboard cutout version with several moments trying to recreate that magic but falling rather short, even provoking unintentional laughter amongst the audience.

There is nothing that has the sense of scale and wonder as the Battle of Helm's Deep or the Ride of the Rohirrim or Gollum's conversation with himself. Indeed the CGI is rather poor in this film and is used much more extensively than the practical effects and fight scenes of the original trilogy.

Is it too harsh to say that The Hobbit films do for the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy what The Phantom Menace and the prequels did for the original Star Wars Trilogy?

The Hobbit is an overlong, bloated mess that was unnecessarily split over three films so I'll save everyone some time and keep it brief.

The original subtitle of this film was There And Back Again. Peter Jackson went there to Middle Earth with huge success with Lord Of The Rings but it might have been best for everyone involved if he hadn't gone back again.

2 stars