The Hobbit: The Battles of the Five Armies - Probably the best of the bunch

I was a huge fan of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movies and, for once, I actually read all the books when I was young – including the ‘prequel’ – the Hobbit.  Therefore, I was always looking forward to the Hobbit movies.  And, I think I was pleased – somewhere.  The first two films were just long.  We all knew that because The Hobbit was a small book, split into three looooong movies.  Even though I’ve seen both previous instalments, I can’t actually remember much about either of them.  There were a couple of memorable moments, but, in between Parts II and III, I’ve managed to pretty much forget almost everything I’d seen (apart from the fact that there were too many CGI scenes and situations where the heroes could never survived!).

However, here we have ‘Part III’ and, in my opinion, it is a bit better.  Granted, most of the movie is one loooong battle scene.  It’s like the ‘Helm’s Deep’ battle from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, only stretched out for the entire film.  Yes, there was as much computer-generated stuff, but it felt slightly more polished than its predecessors.  I never really went for the CGI in any of the Hobbit movies.  Even though they’ve been made over ten years after the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended, the CGI seems to have gotten worse over the years.

Even though there was probably the least story in this film, it actually came off as the best – or most realistic.  There were no ridiculous barrel-chases crashing down rivers, or gaggles of dwarves bouncing down mineshafts and just getting up again without a scratch.

Once again, the titular Hobbit (played – again – excellently by Martin Freeman) is not in it enough, despite the film being named after him.  Instead, the film focuses on characters who have been shoved in to pad it out, or the ones we just don’t care that much about.

Maybe the best thing about The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, was it was actually the last one in the series and had a sense of resolution about it.

Bottom line: I loved the Lord of the Rings films and I loved the Hobbit novel.  I sort of enjoyed the first two movies, but definitely need to watch them again as I can hardly remember anything about them.  At least this last one seems to have stuck in my mind a bit more and I don’t reckon that I’ll need to re-watch it quite so soon to remember what’s happened.  Yeah, it held my attention more than the others.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that