The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The last film in The Hobbit trilogy is by far the best because it shares the elegiac mythic qualities of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After watching the first film in the trilogy, I criticised Peter Jackson for his decision to tell the story of The Hobbit as a prelude to The Lord of the Rings rather than as a story in its own right. That decision gave an uncertain quality to the first film with the film makers unsure as to whether to emphasise the lighter nature of The Hobbit itself or to continue the mythic feel of The Lord of the Rings. In this final film, there is no such uncertainty and the elegiac nature of the film fits the content closely with its theme of the seductions of wealth and power.

As Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian:

'Peter Jackson has pulled it off. He has successfully concluded his outrageously steroidal inflation of Tolkien’s Hobbit into a triple-decker Middle Earth saga equivalent to the Rings trilogy, and made it something terrifically exciting and spectacular, genial and rousing, with all the cheerful spirit of Saturday morning pictures. And if poor, bemused little Bilbo Baggins now looks a bit lost on this newly enlarged action-fantasy canvas – well, he raises his game as well, leavening the mix with some unexpectedly engaging and likable drama. The Battle of the Five Armies is at least as weighty as The Return of the King. It packs a huge chain-mailed punch and lands a resounding mythic stonk. But it’s less conceited, more accessible and it makes do with just the one ending.'

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Billy Boyd - The Last Goodbye.