4. The Battle Of Five Armies Has Relevance To The War Of The Ring
After the publication of The Hobbit's sequel - The Lord Of The Rings - Tolkein toyed with returning to his earlier adventure and tying it chronologically into the War Of The Ring. This was something Peter Jackson acheived successfuly, without ever needing to explicitly flash-foward to future events of shoe-horn in characters that tied The Hobbit to The Lord Of The Rings. Using The Silmarillion, appendices and other Tolkien Lore, Jackson shaped the final film as a natural precursor to his original trilogy without needing to create lots of new material. The location of the Lonely Mountain Erebor is as much a strategic position in the war against good and evil as it is a treasure horde of untold wealth. In this film Gandalf serves to reminder Thranduil - and the audience - of the consequences of it falling into orc hands. It would give them a strategic position over all the other races, making them a greater threat still. With the Necromancer already driven from Dol Guldur, the battle at the Mountain was the next key step in the war against the darkness - a war that couldn't be lost. These subtle references elevated The Hobbit Trilogy from a simple quest to kill a dragon and steal back its gold. The battle for Erebor became the first strike in the war that would end at the gates of Mordor many years later.