Even if you think the movie studio was milking you for three movie tickets over three years out of a book that probably could have fit into a single film, you now get to see your patience rewarded and your virtue justified.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2024

It’s a tighter and more focused movie and runs 20 minutes shorter than either of the first two Hobbit films. More importantly it feels in tune with the previous movies and offers us an exciting and fitting conclusion filled with great action and emotion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Beyond letting audiences down with the final entry of six, Jackson doesn't meet his own high standards and treatment for the Middle Earth saga up to this point.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 16, 2022

As an individual film, The Battle of the Five Armies serves its purpose. It's a nice way to close the series out, and man, does it feel great to finally get the full picture.

| Feb 11, 2022

Heroes and villains abound, and while there isn't quite enough actual story to justify the two-hour-and twenty-minute running time, the battle between good and evil is so primal, so elemental you can't help but let it get your blood racing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2021

The final episode neatly concludes the epic quest started so long ago, but as the forces of good and evil collide in prolonged warfare, it's easy to forget the backstory.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 4, 2020

The action was definitely breath taking; it is almost like they really did save all the best for the last.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 20, 2020

Looser and lighter - and, in the end, that's satisfying enough.

| Aug 13, 2020

[Peter Jackson] has been wrapped up in Middle Earth for so long that his vision - which was once fresh and exciting - has been filtered down and worn out.

| Original Score: C | Jul 16, 2020

A mostly satisfying end to a long, troubled journey.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 7, 2020

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, with much effect, delivers a satisfying ending to The Hobbit trilogy that never separates itself from the epic cinema or the Middle-Earth magic. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 26, 2020

Peter Jackson ends the story of The Hobbit with a lot of energy, passion and a satisfying ending. This latest installment is an audiovisual feast on the big screen. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 30, 2020

As a filmgoing experience in its own right, The Battle of the Five Armies is erratic and unsatisfying.

| Jan 9, 2020

A very, very long battle that lacks in substance but makes up for it in thrills.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 27, 2019

Beyond a bloated, mind-numbing free-for-all that feels like watching a bunch of school kids playing Dodge ball with reckless abandon, Jackson fails to instill the same sense of awe and magic evident in his first round of monolithic films.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 19, 2019

The casting has always seemed perfect, but we see how adeptly Freeman finds authentic resolve in the mannerisms and quirks we've come to expect as he has inhabited his character.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 2, 2019

There are many things I don't understand: quantum mechanics, car commercials, who put the bomp in the bomb bah bomp bah bomp. But chief among the perplexing unsolvables to me remains how people don't like the current Hobbit series.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 30, 2019

Peter Jackson is a monumentally gifted world builder, but The Battle of the Five Armies is obese with dull characterisation yet skeletal when it comes to energy and narrative satisfaction. Tolkien's hot water bottle of a fairytale has been scorched.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 17, 2019

It's a great, intimate story told by a fine actor, but it unfortunately gets drowned out by all the noise.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 20, 2019

The film is massive in cast, battle and scale. I think it loses itself in all of that, but it's still full of heart.

| Jan 31, 2019