Peter Jackson's 2014 conclusion opens with Smaug's attack on Lake-town, a sequence of real visual force that is over within the film's first ten minutes. What follows is the Hobbit trilogy's most uneven entry: a film that delivers its most spectacular action sequences while giving its central characters less room to breathe than any other entry in the series. The ambition is evident. The emotional architecture to support it is not always there.
At a Glance
Director: Peter Jackson
Runtime: 144 minutes
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Billy Connolly
Release: 2014
Critics Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, spectacular but dramatically thin)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, entertaining but unsatisfying)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Smaug's attack on Lake-town is resolved in the film's opening minutes, and the remainder is dominated by the political conflict over the Lonely Mountain's treasure and the Battle of the Five Armies itself. The plot is the trilogy's most thinly constructed, resolving the franchise's central conflicts with a haste and superficiality the more carefully built Lord of the Rings conclusion did not permit. The Battle of the Five Armies is the film's most spectacular set-piece, though it lacks the emotional weight and character-driven tension of the Lord of the Rings trilogy's finest battle sequences, substituting visual scale for the stakes that made Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields so affecting.
Characters
Thorin is given the trilogy's most complete arc, and Richard Armitage plays the character's obsession and eventual clarity with a depth and emotional honesty that makes Thorin's resolution the Hobbit trilogy's most affecting character achievement. His death is the film's most resonant moment, handled with a restraint and grief that gives the trilogy's secondary thread its fullest and most moving conclusion. Martin Freeman's Bilbo is given the trilogy's least satisfying farewell, a character whose conclusion is handled with a brevity and thinness the character's long journey does not deserve, and whose performance demonstrates an intelligence the insufficient material does not always reward. Ian McKellen's Gandalf is as reliably magnificent as ever in a role the film's structural priorities do not always serve. Billy Connolly's Dain Ironfoot arrives late but with a blunt energy that gives the battle sequences their most purely enjoyable new presence.
Tone
Jackson pitches the film at a register of spectacular action and resolution, and the approach is partially successful. The Battle of the Five Armies has a visual ambition that makes it the Hobbit trilogy's most purely spectacular entry, but the absence of character development in its action sequences makes the spectacle feel increasingly hollow as the film progresses. The film's most effective passages are its quieter character moments, particularly those involving Thorin's arc, which demonstrate the intelligence the more purely spectacular sequences do not always achieve.
Meaning / Themes
At its core, the film is about greed and redemption, about Thorin's dragon sickness and his eventual recovery of the values that made him worth following. Thorin's death is the film's most emotionally complete moment, giving the franchise's central concern with the corrupting power of desire its most fully realised Hobbit trilogy resolution. The treatment of Bilbo's farewell is the trilogy's most significant structural failure: a conclusion that does not give the character's transformation the weight and care Freeman's performance across the trilogy has earned. The film ends where it must, but not with the grace the journey deserved.
Direction
Jackson's direction is technically accomplished and visually ambitious throughout. The Battle of the Five Armies is the film's directorial highlight, giving the Hobbit trilogy its most purely spectacular action sequence and demonstrating a command of large-scale battle filmmaking the Lord of the Rings trilogy had established as the standard. The film's character sequences are handled with competence but without the emotional intelligence the Lord of the Rings trilogy's finest entries demonstrated, and the conclusion in particular is handled with a brevity the trilogy's emotional journey does not deserve. Howard Shore's score provides a sonic grandeur the film around it does not always merit, completing the Middle-earth musical saga with a fidelity and craft the trilogy's structural compromises cannot diminish.
Cultural Reception
The Battle of the Five Armies received a mixed critical reception on its release, with most reviewers praising Armitage's Thorin and the battle sequences while noting the film's narrative thinness and the inadequacy of Bilbo's farewell. Its commercial performance was the Hobbit trilogy's strongest in relative terms, though it performed below the Lord of the Rings trilogy's comparable entries. It is now consistently regarded as the Hobbit trilogy's weakest entry, though Thorin's arc and Armitage's performance are frequently cited as the trilogy's most satisfying secondary achievement.
Final Verdict: The Hobbit trilogy's most visually ambitious entry and its most emotionally uneven. Richard Armitage's Thorin is given the trilogy's most affecting arc, and his death scene is the closest the Hobbit films come to the emotional weight of the Lord of the Rings trilogy at its best. But Bilbo's farewell is rushed and underwritten, and The Battle of the Five Armies gives the Hobbit trilogy a conclusion that honours its most compelling secondary character while failing its central one.