The Hobbit : The Battle of the Five Armies Review

      Here it is - the end of a wonderful Middle-earth story which took around 13 years to develop. Just before I start I would like to put a disclaimer that this review will be solely based on the movies. I haven't read the books, but really hope to change the situation in the upcoming 2015. 

     First of all, if you haven't watched the movie yet, just go already and do it. This final defining chapter of The Hobbit story will be definitely worth your time as it would be hard to find anything like that in a upcoming years, I believe. And yes, there's a lot of criticism surrounding this particular movie which comes from the hurt readers of the book and other critics not happy within the amount of CGI effects put into this last installment. I guess it's a lot easier to come out as someone of a minority of viewers who still isn't aware of how the whole story ends. So, if you can after watching the whole franchise live the books for the dessert with the new universe full of untold details. That's basically the only recipe to fully enjoy a story showed in the movies. Of course it's harder to be done than said, especially than we come to such a classic as The Hobbit is. 

      Now coming to my own Hobbit experience it is the movie that seemed to be a round for quite a while in my watch list. I got the DVD during last Christmas but never really felt up to see it as this new imaginary world after just seeing the posters and everything seemed just not as serious and deep as Lord of the Rings was. So, I only became determined to spend around 3 hours of watching it when I got my ankle broken and couldn't move for a long time by the end of summer. And what an involving story that was. In the day after I watched part 2 as well as an exiting trailer of The Battle of the Five armies. And let me say, trailers with a perfectly chosen soundtrack, action and emotion like that teaser one are really that drives people to come to the cinema and watch movies. I was lucky to wait only a few months until the final chapter itself and finally watched it in 3D on the Christmas Eve December 24th. 

      Talking about the movie itself, it was full of everything. This final installment was darker than the previous ones: no singing, less jokes told. As you could expect from the tittle itself the main action surrounded the final epic battle. And when I say epic I really mean it. Hard to choose between two main battles which comes first Thorin vs Azog or Legolas vs Bolg. I wouldn't choose to judge those to much just because I guess it's just hard to not come over the top when it comes to the 'legendary' battles. Another thing you could say that battle was a bit too much all over the place. On the contrary it exactly is as it should be - chaos in the making. The acting part was nice to watch as always, everyone paid as much attention to their role as they should have. Then it comes to the character development Thorin has grown the most to me following the changes caused by dragon sickness. His fall resulted in new purpose to redeem himself. From my perspective that whole story stole a show from Bilbo Baggings for a while. The relationship between those two seemed one of the things enjoyable to follow through all of the movies. And to not sugarcoat the review for this movie too much I would like to add a few flaws of it. Through the movie I couldn't stop the feeling that I already saw something very similar to this starting with this massive battle, the help of eagles, Bilbo getting back home. You could find at least a few resemblances between The Battle of the Five Armies and The Return of the King. Also, there were a couple of cliché moments following the change in Thranduil's character. In the end the transformation seemed to be too big and not so convincing. Although, I couldn't say it didn't seemed reasonable.
   Overall, this movie was truthfully joyful experience for me. It takes more than unique storyline to be great, to fulfill this quest you need they way it is told to be as much exceptional. So, I want to thank all the crew and cast members for this incredible work and bringing it all alive.