The Lord Of The Rings And The Hobbit: Ranked From Worst To Best
6. The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies
What The Battle Of The Five Armies has over the preceding Hobbit movies is that it has some semblance of a standard narrative. Following a 30s serial-style resolution of the previous film, the movie builds a conflict, twists it further, then provides some proper resolution. A three-act structure in a Hobbit movie? Hell must look like the peak of Ravenhill. Sadly, what the final Middle-Earth movie makes up for in having the framing of a proper story, it loses by not having one to fill the template. The central event is a minor part of Tolkiens book, a narrative device more than spectacle, and thus, while Jackson endevours to tie the whole thing into the broader Middle-Earth scope, the skirmish feels rather inconsequential to the overarching Hobbit narrative - bar Thorins death nothing that important happens. The big problem with The Battle Of The Five Armies is the battle. Whereas Helms Deep and Pelinnor Fields were expertly constructed, telling a story as much as providing adrenaline, here, with Jacksons digital camera swooping through CGI vistas showing indistinct blobs either dying or being ridiculously powerful, its just empty spectacle that pads out the already slight narrative. When the movie pulls away from the (misleadingly two-way) fight, focusing on the individual character arcs, theres some genuinely strong moments, which begs the question why the director didn't take a leaf from Tolkien and have the battle be a mere backdrop.
