Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Una delusione annunciata.
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies I think could be a very good film. It just needs to cut something completely irrelevant to both this particular film and the epic trilogy: Bilbo Baggins.
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Peter Jackson finaliza su travesía en seis tramos por la Tierra Media con una propuesta afortunadamente divertida y que pasa en un suspiro. Pero no aporta absolutamente nada que no hayamos visto antes.
- Nicholas Bell @ Ioncinema
- William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: [It is] egregiously besides the point for a story about the folly of war and greed to luxuriate this long on rampant destruction, especially as a byproduct of stretching The Hobbit into three films for monetary gain.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Similar to “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I,” “The Battle of the Five Armies” is just part of a film. At least with this one, we get the ending we’re looking for, and it’s pretty spectacular to see.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: It’s taken us just shy of six hours to get here but finally Peter Jackson delivers with the conclusion to his painfully overextended Hobbit trilogy.
- Andy Crump @ Movie Mezzanine
- Excerpt: All we’re left with once [Jackson’s] grand plans go awry is the nostalgic tug to return to the textured, lived-in Middle-earth of 2001 before he got around to bulldozing it.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La película más floja de todas las de la Tierra Media.
- Jim Dixon @ Examiner.com
- M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: The end of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies primarily brings with it a sensation of relief that the muddling and ultimately middling affair is finished.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Peter Jackson creates a satisfying, visually spectacular finale, weaving all the threads together in the bucolic Shire.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Jackson and his battery of writers—regular collaborators Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens, plus Del Toro—have found scope and room to manoeuvre, and above all, allow the viewer to relax and revel in this invented world, less colourful than James Cameron’s Pandora, but far more diverse and substantial.
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Could someone please take these three Hobbit movies and just edit them into one enjoyable 2 hour film? Thanks in advance.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I fear that Peter Jackson has been suffering from a similar affliction to the dwarf king’s “dragon sickness”: a compulsive lust for epicness.
- Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: The unlikely coincidence of five different armies arriving on the same battlefield all within 30 minutes of one another is a plot hole I am very willing to overlook, but the smashing, throttling, and bludgeoning bass of the enveloping meleé is on the intriguing edge of ho-hum.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: What it also lacks in stand-alone value is made up in its gaggle of spectacular set-pieces and a coda that directly leads into “The Fellowship of the Ring.” At least the last prequel is a worthy companion piece to Peter Jackson’s superior trilogy.
- Oktay Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Kristin Dreyer Kramer @ NightsAndWeekends.com
- Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
- Excerpt: Peter Jackson and crew have brought things full circle, ending where he began, but not before The Battle of the Five Armies takes its toll on the people of Tolkien’s legendary world.
- Joe Lozito @ Big Picture Big Sound
- Excerpt: Rarely has a final battle been so anticlimactic (or padding been so apparent).
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Maybe not as fun as Smaug, Battle caps Jackson’s six-part masterpiece
- Alan Mattli @ Facing the Bitter Truth [German]
- Excerpt: Peter Jackson’s ‘Hobbit’ trilogy may never have reached the soaring heights of his ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, but as another chapter of fantasy film history draws to a close with ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’, we are left with the realization: this journey to Middle-earth has left a mark as well.
- Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Don’t get me wrong, I still look forward to the day when all three movies are out on video and someone cuts the saga down to a single movie that sticks closer to Tolkien’s book, but for now I’ll take what I can get, and this isn’t bad.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: Everything ends.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: But while this third Hobbit film may be a fitting finale for the series – and will likely fare better with audiences that took issue with the leisurely pace of the previous films – it’s also the part of the trilogy that suffers most from being chopped into three parts. All payoff with no setup, that battle royale finale can be frequently exhilarating – but just as frequently wearying.
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I was happy with The Battle of the Five Armies, the concluding chapter of this series. It is evenly paced, and the organization of the narrative is much cleaner than The Desolation of Smaug which I felt was messy and too stuffed with uninteresting characters. Here the placement of characters and their motivations is handled much better and much more economically. From the get-go, I couldn’t clear the thought from my mind, that the film’s heroes are committing a crime that, I think, is a felony in L.A.
- Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Sarah Ward @ artsHub
- Andrew Wyatt @ St. Louis Magazine
- Excerpt: Beyond serving up pure fantasy spectacle and some Tolkienist pandering, Battle primarily concerns the distorting effects of wealth and the power it represents.
