mucm The best of the trilogy, the most amazing and breathtaking one

Kirpianuscus The battle scenes. as a huge trophy of a film in which CGI is the basic ingredient. and all is spectacular. but not convincing. first, because it is a fake option to transform "The Hobbit" in a trilogy. second, because, contrary to "Lord of the Ring", the new serie has not...magic. like new "Stae Wars" serie, all was said, and the only real problem is than "The Hobbit" has its personality. to transform it in another LOTR is not the most inspired idea.but, the end saves the appearences. and this could be a good poiny.

Gavin Purtell The third - and final - Hobbit film is a valiant attempt to recapture the 'Lord of the Rings' magic of Middle Earth, but too often feels tired and repetitive, especially in the sixth film in the franchise. It's by no means bad, it's just - as with the first two Hobbit films - unnecessarily padded, with lots of flashbacks and scenes of staring into the distance. I'm still not convinced the three Hobbit films couldn't have worked as one cohesive 3 & a bit hour film...Even though the second film featured his name in the title, Smaug (Cumberbatch) is quickly dealt with and the plot hastily progresses to be about the humans - led by Bard (Evans) - tying to move into the Mountain with the Dwarves - led by Thorin (Armitage) & a mostly redundant cameo from Dain (Connolly). To complicate things, the Elves - led by Legolas (Bloom)'s dad - show up too and then the Orcs arrive. By my count, that's four armies. The fifth army never really eventuates... Gandalf (McKellen) & Bilbo (Freeman) are left stuck in the middle of all this.There's some quick appearances from Elrond (Weaving), Galadriel (Blanchett) & Saruman (Lee), which are unnecessary and don't add to the plot. There's some good battle scenes, but nothing to top 'The Two Towers' or 'The Return of the King'. Some mild humour thrown in, but a lot of the film feels bogged down and aware it's "the defining chapter" or "the final farewell" as it's been billed.Plenty of frustrating moments - Tauriel (Lilly)'s "romance" with Kili (Turner), Thorin's "dragon sickness", the get-out-of-jail-card that the Eagles pose. Despite these, the score is still great, with the use of the familiar motifs still effective and the cinematography beautiful.

siderite The Battle of the Five Armies title is a great exaggeration of what an army entails. The movie is about more or less a skirmish with some rather imaginative weaponry. The plot goes sideways and after two three hours long previous films we get a two hours and a half mess that is half completely over the top battle scenes and the other half people talking out of their asses. It is pure chaos, where orcs are either mighty unbeatable beasts bred for war or cardboard armor wearing morons easily defeated by fishermen's wives and children, as the action demands. Things start to remind of Pirates of the Caribbean, and not only because it's the same actor doing kind of the same stuff. There is even a prolonged ending with Bilbo Baggings returning to the Shire, almost as if wanting to undo the good idea in the Lord of the Rings movies in which they removed the boring book ending with Saruman taking refuge in the Shire, and that portrays hobbits as petty bureaucratic creatures, rather than kind and resilient and courageous as declared everywhere else in the films. If I enjoyed the first two movies and wanted to see how it will all end, the third was a ridiculous failure, trying to do too much with too little: making a country brawl look like an epic battle, keeping the lighter more children oriented tone while killing characters and trying to express deeper heroic emotions, trying to somehow raise on the same level three organized military groups and a bunch of fishermen and animals and tying up lose ends that were there only to make this a trilogy rather than a pair of decent movies. It is now when all the jokes about the eagles made in good fun in the first two movies (and in Lord of the Rings as well) turn smirky, when the only logic to the plot and action seems to be the panic of production companies trying to achieve their financial goals rather than tell a good story. It is here where the disappointment that everyone talks about when referring to The Hobbit movies raises its ugly head and grows on the small mistakes of the previous two movies. So in order to enjoy the trilogy, one must somehow detach themselves from the ending and see it as an imperfect finish to an otherwise fun movie, maybe imagine their own.