The Battle of the Five Armies Review

First off, I saw the movie with Turkish subtitles, so anything that was Elvish or Black Speech I didn't understand. (I feel like the battle would have been better if I'd known what Azog was telling his troops to do.)

Also I've seen the movie once.  So my opinion is subject to change and change dramatically.  Warning, this review contains mild spoilers as well as references to The Desolation of Smaug, Return of the King and The Two Towers.  With that said, things I didn't like first;

On the technical side, Legolas pulls a slow-motion CGI stunt that's even less believable than the slide down a dying Oliphant’s trunk in Return of the King or the shield surfing in the Two Towers.  I didn't know someone would have the audacity to try to top that.  And speaking of topping things, the whole Kili and Tauriel romance was rather cute in the Desolation of Smaug (even if the premise was completely ridiculous and Kili ended up lying in a bowl of nuts.)  Maybe I'm just biased against romance but except for the scene where they're both trying to save each other’s lives, every scene with the two of them just seemed face palm worthy. 

Scripting was alright, but in my opinion, the death scenes needed work.  Of course, any death scene is a bad death scene, these were just worse than usual.  Honestly though, I think I cared about five characters in total; and I'm usually the kind of person who can hear three lines and love a character based off of that.  There just wasn't much to care about in this film. (It's actually one of the few films I’ve seen which could have ended with an atom bomb landing on all the characters and it wouldn't have mattered to me.)  Now usually I'm okay with stories where I yell at the main characters** but even so I spent an awful lot of time mentally screaming at Thorin, and to a lesser extent Thranduil, Saruman, and assorted other characters.  Then, there's the ending, which touches on a few fun things, but also completely ignores certain important scenes that to me are vital to actually resolving the plot.  The Return of the King includes about three good endings; Battle of the Five Armies barely has one. 

On the upside there are actually some amusing, if not laugh out loud funny parts (even Elrond gets a mildly amusing line, what is the world coming too?).  Bilbo is still his awkwardly funny self, which is a bit of a relief in the midst of the conflict going on with most of the other characters.  And I know I put CGI Legolas stunts in the negative section, but it was still funny, as well as the fact that Legolas finally runs out of arrows.  Dain, cousin of Thorin, finally shows up and he's one of the characters I actually liked, he's hilarious; think dwarf, with the temperament of an angry Scotsman and the accent to match.  Also, Dain rides an armored pig.  Thranduil finally gets moving and actually does something with his elf army and his elk, and really it's about time he got around to showing off the typical epic elven fighting style instead of just staying at home and proving himself a jerk.  Bard was still good, which was nice, and even if his daughters are basically useless; his son Bain is pretty awesome.  Galadriel also gets to show off her (scary) tough side briefly before basically collapsing in a heap on the ground and Tauriel was actually useful for much of the film.  Technically, the battle, while it takes up about half the film, is made survivable by several little breaks that deal with one on one duels or someone who is out of the main action at that point.  Also since it was a movie about armies there is a lot of really nice armour and big dramatic wide shots of impressive landscapes; visually this movie was pretty awesome, in spite of the flaws. 

Shockingly enough, I actually did enjoy The Battle of the Five Armies, but with that said, I can’t decide if it was worth it or not…  I might write a spoiler review later because there were some moments in this movie that were just so completely rant worthy.  To sum up, barely tolerable romance, bad death scenes, too much climax, not enough resolution, bad plot, unlikable characters, some funny stuff, armour, weapons, and dwarves riding pigs and mountain goats. 

I'm not even going to venture a recommendation on whether you should go see it or not, so much of it depends on your mood. 

** The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien and Hamlet by Shakespeare are both prime examples of stories where I spent a fair amount of time yelling at main characters and yet I still enjoyed them on some level.