“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” is a powerful conclusion to the “Hobbit” trilogy. Several reviewers believe it to be the best of the three “Hobbit” films, and I agree. This final journey into Middle Earth comes with a price, which is the dramatic deaths of both villains and a few heroes.
The movie also nicely sets up the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which takes place following “The Hobbit” in Tolkien’s saga. This final entry features energetic battle scenes involving humans, elves, dwarfs, and orcs. It contains emotional wallops as survivors cope with the loss of loved ones, and it features a character who loses his way and finds it again in the end. The song during the credits, “The Last Good-bye,” is both appropriate and very well done, and sung by a Hobbit himself from “Lord of the Rings,” Billy Boyd, who played Pippen.
Despite the positive elements, the battle scenes are violent and include decapitations of orcs and scenes of swords and spears and slashing. Also, a certain evil dragon sets villages and people on fire, with the scenes showing them engulfed in flames. Therefore, we are prevented from awarding this movie our Dove “Family-Approved” Seal.
