On The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Six films, thirteen years and probably over 1000 minutes had given us Tolkien’s middle earth ring story filtered through Peter Jackson and his team. The achievement is astounding and has proved a boost for the genre and groundbreaking in the use of motion capture. The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Two Towers (2002) stand out as the best of the six films, yet there have been successes in them all. That Jackson and the middle earth cast bow out on The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is a huge disappointment. This is the weakest of the all the films and like the later (but not yet released) Star Wars trilogy (episodes 1, 2 and 3, 1999 - 2005) The Hobbit films always felt too reliant on CGI and Five Armies takes this to new levels. As we watch five computed generated armies, riding computer generated animals and falling off computer generated settings the emotion and the excitement is lost. Impressive, but not eye opening the CGI is monotonous as are the repeated, rammed down your throat themes. The main theme of Five Armies is that gold causes greed and greed is bad. Appropriately, too much money is the likely cause of Five Armies’ lack of creativity and reliance on CGI. To visit middle earth on film is always a thrilling adventure, you just need to travel back over a decade.