Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the worst of the Hobbit trilogy, but not by much. It’s not a great movie. It has its highlights, of course, but there’s so little plot, and so little drama or anything to really care about.
This has been a problem with the entire trilogy, but particularly in this movie, there is too much of a focus on tying this story to the Lord of the Rings. And to a certain extent, I get that. There isn’t enough story to make The Hobbit into three movies, so they’re going to stretch the story in ways connected with things we already know. The problem is we don’t care. We know how that story is begun, proceeds, and concludes, because we’ve seen those movies. They were great.
The strength of this movie is once again Martin Freeman as Bilbo. He gives it his all, and makes the character as compelling as can be, given that he actually doesn’t have that much to do in this story. Unfortunately, Thorin is pretty much the central character, and he’s never been that interesting.
Overall, this is kind of the oppsoite of The Return of the King. The Return of the King allowed the LOTR trilogy to go out with a bang, winning basically every major award possible. And here, we have the Hobbit trilogy going out with a whimper. Nobody seemed to care at this point. Watching this movie almost felt like an obligation.
Again, it’s not a bad movie. But it’s in the shadow of far superior movies, and it’s a shadow that the movie has a chance to get out of, but refuses to.
Rating: 5/10
