The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies review

When watching The Hobbit, it’s hard not to compare it to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was in my humble opinion the greatest epic fantasy movies ever made. By any possible standard of comparison, The Hobbit does not measure up to it. What both series have in common is that the final movie in the series is the best one of them. What has plagued the previous two movies is that although there are great action scenes and drama, the movies are overly long and there are many slow spots. Since this movie was very action driven and was loaded with fight scenes, that wasn’t so much the case. It’s only the last ten minutes of the movie that I found to be anti-climactic.

There were some good character arcs on this display, mostly from Bilbo Baggins and Thoren Oakenshield, the leader of dwarfs. There were also memorable special effects, especially the dragon, Smaug, obliterating Laketown. Although I found the re-occurrence of some familiar characters from The Lord of the Rings to be neat, it was hard to reconcile that the characters in this movie were younger, but the actors who played them were about a decade older since their last appearance in these roles. In the end, I enjoyed the movie. If you stuck through the first two movies, you will definitely want to see it through, and you will likely be pleasantly surprised.