--- title: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" year: 2014 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies" fi1m_score: 54 critics_score: 60 critics_reviews: 23 published: "2026-09-19T15:43:30.905042+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T15:43:31.252302+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) Directed by Peter Jackson · 2h 24m · MPA PG-13 · Action, Adventure, Fantasy **Fi1m score: 54** · Critics 60 from 23 reviews *In a sentence:* Five armies, one hobbit, and the hobbit sits out most of the fight unconscious > Peter Jackson’s last *Hobbit* film is a battle that runs the better part of an hour, much computer-generated masonry and one small scene about an acorn. The acorn is the best thing in it, fans should finish, and nobody else need begin. ## Synopsis Lake-town burns. Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) has left the Lonely Mountain to punish the men who sheltered the dwarves, and Bard (Luke Evans), a bargeman with a bow and children to save, climbs the bell tower to face him. Inside Erebor, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) walks the recovered treasure hall in the grip of dragon-sickness, refusing to share the gold with the survivors and demanding the Arkenstone, the king’s jewel that Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has quietly kept in his coat. King Thranduil (Lee Pace) marches an elf army to the mountain to claim what he says is his. Far off at Dol Guldur, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) hangs caged while a darker enemy gathers its strength. Orcs are on the move, and five armies are about to meet in the ruins of Dale. ## Review Peter Jackson’s third and last *Hobbit* film picks up where *The Desolation of Smaug* (2013) left off, with the dragon in the air over Lake-town, and ends 144 minutes later after a battle that runs the better part of an hour. J. R. R. Tolkien covered the fight in a few pages and had Bilbo sleep through most of it. Jackson keeps that detail and builds everything else. What he has made is huge, well tooled and mostly weightless, with two good performances and one scene we will remember, and it is for people who have sat through the first two and nobody else. The opening is the best stretch. Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch, with the same slow purr as before) burns Lake-town from the air, and Andrew Lesnie shoots the wooden town in orange and black, the camera skimming the canals as the roofs go up. Luke Evans’s Bard climbs a bell tower with a bow and his son, and for ten minutes the film has one man, one dragon and a clear job. It also has its best joke, a barge piled with gold being poled through the burning water while the townspeople swim. Then the dragon is dealt with and there are two hours to fill. Richard Armitage fills a good many of them. Thorin, inside Erebor, has the gold-sickness, and Armitage plays it low and hoarse, pacing the treasure hall and eyeing his own company as if pricing them. Dan Hennah’s hall is the film’s one frightening set: a floor of coins so deep it shifts, with the dragon’s shape still scorched into it. When Thorin stands alone on that floor and the gold seems to rise and close over him, Jackson trusts a picture and an actor, and it works. So does a quiet exchange between Thorin and Bilbo about an acorn. It moved us more than the farewells still to come, because Martin Freeman plays it as a small man trying to say a large thing and not quite managing. Freeman is the film’s other asset, and the film wastes him. Bilbo has the title and, for long stretches, a seat in the stalls. He hides the Arkenstone, makes one honest decision about it, and is then moved to the edge of the frame while larger people hit each other. The screenplay, credited to Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Jackson and Guillermo del Toro, has decided this is Thorin’s story. That leaves the hobbit in *The Hobbit* watching his own climax from behind a wall. Then the battle. Jabez Olssen cuts across five fronts: dwarves under Billy Connolly’s Dain Ironfoot, who arrives on an armoured boar and insults everyone within earshot; Lee Pace’s Thranduil and his elves in silver; Bard’s townsfolk in the ruins of Dale; and orcs from two directions. For the first quarter of an hour the geography holds and the tactics can be read. Then it moves into Dale and up onto the frozen falls above it and becomes a run of duels, each with its own stunt and none with any weight. Orlando Bloom’s Legolas runs up a collapsing tower, stone by falling stone, and looks faintly embarrassed about it. Somewhere in there we felt nothing at all, then noticed how much had been spent to make us feel nothing, and that was where the film lost us. Evangeline Lilly’s Tauriel and Aidan Turner’s Kili get a romance the film keeps cutting back to as though it were the point. The craft round the edges is careful. Richard Taylor, Ann Maskrey and Bob Buck put Thranduil in armour like a set of good cutlery and Dain’s dwarves in iron plate that clanks. Howard Shore brings back the dwarves’ theme from *An Unexpected Journey* (2012) for the charge out of the mountain and it lands, though the score is doing work the images should be doing. Ian McKellen spends the first act in a cage at Dol Guldur and the rest sitting on rocks looking troubled, which he does better than most people do anything. Jackson’s own standard is the problem. *The Return of the King* (2003) had a battle this size and made us care because we always knew where the small people were. Here we always know where the camera is. The last twenty minutes are quieter, and a closing match to the older trilogy is a graceful way out of a room Jackson has been in for a long time. Watch it at home, where the battle shrinks to a size the eye can hold. If you have not seen the first two, do not start here. *Fi1m score 54, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come down in favour, though not by much: positive reviews outnumber negative ones, with a sizeable group in between. The praise gathers around the battle itself. The reviews call it inventive, varied and convincing, a skirmish from the book turned into the best part of an hour of tactics and carnage. Thorin’s descent into greed is picked out as the most interesting thread, Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is admired even by those who dislike the film, and several reviews find the closing scenes unexpectedly restrained. The reservations cluster on what the fighting crowds out. Detractors find the film bloated, heavy on digital armies and light on feeling, with Bilbo pushed to the edge of his own story. The spread is wide, running from five-star raves to dismissals. Vulture argues Jackson has lost his soul to spectacle, /Film calls it the weakest of the three, and Sight and Sound admits to no interest in the adaptations at all. ### Reviews we read (23) - **Total Film** (90/100, inferred): Jackson turns a footnote skirmish into an endlessly inventive battle full of tactics and variety while punctuating carnage with gags and tenderness. The ending provides a restrained, perfectly pitched farewell to Middle-earth. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/hobbit-battle-five-armies-review/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (80/100, inferred): Jackson’s pumped-up final hobbit movie really works: it’s exciting, spectacular, genial and rousing. It makes do with one ending. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/11/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review-packs-a-punch) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Todd McCarthy (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the final film the most purely entertaining of the Hobbit series, praising its action-packed war sequences and the warm, amiable mood of the finale. They single out the combat choreography and character resolutions for praise. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/hobbit-battle-five-armies-film-752865/) - **The Times**, Kate Muir (75/100, inferred): The film goes out with a 45-minute baroque, virtuoso battle scene that could be an entire tragi-comic film in itself, with breathing space for personal drama and humour. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-5zwls97q7n3) - **Empire**, James Dyer (70/100, inferred): The film transforms Tolkien's brief battle into a thunderous, inventive melee that concludes Jackson's Middle-earth saga fittingly. The critic praises the physicality of the combat, Thorin's arc and the restrained ending but notes some set-pieces feel truncated. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/hobbit-battle-five-armies-review/) - **Screen Daily** (70/100, inferred): Robustly entertaining, occasionally affecting and sometimes thrilling, very much of a piece with the first two Hobbit films though not groundbreaking. It showcases Jackson's skill for large-scale action scenes but doesn't stir the soul as much as it rocks the senses. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies/5080510.article) - **Slant Magazine** (70/100, inferred): The critic highlights the film's strengths in dynamic action sequences and depictions of platonic male friendship, while noting issues with the romantic subplot and the overall sense of it being table-setting for prior films. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies/) - **Variety**, Scott Foundas (70/100, inferred): The critic calls it the trilogy’s most engrossing and expeditious episode, with a rousing battle and emotional payoffs, though only for fans. [Read](https://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-1201367492/) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (3/5): More of Jackson's proven formula of battles and elaborate action set pieces, enjoyable if you've liked the previous films but lacking in honest emotion. The hour-long climactic smackdown is one of the grandest sequences he's shot and a fitting tribute to his ambition. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies) - **The AV Club**, A.A. Dowd (C): The review criticizes the film as a plodding finish to the trilogy, with excessive padding and reliance on CGI spectacle over substance. It praises Martin Freeman's performance as Bilbo but notes the marginalization of the protagonist. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-battle-of-the-five-armies-brings-the-hobbit-trilogy-1798182221) - **Los Angeles Times**, Betsy Sharkey (50/100, inferred): The critic says five armies are too many and the spectacle overwhelms, though Thorin’s internal battle is the film’s most interesting fight and it satisfies fans while wrapping up loose ends. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-hobbit-battle-five-armies-review-20141217-column.html) - **RogerEbert.com** (50/100, inferred): The critic praises the battle sequence and attention to detail but notes the film feels like a drawn-out conclusion rather than a vibrant standalone, with the story centering on greed and dragon-sickness. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-2014) - **Evening Standard**, David Sexton (40/100, inferred): The film is essentially one long battle scene after a lively dragon prelude, with monotonous fighting and excessive CGI. The critic finds the hair, beards and overall spectacle wearying and notes it offers more of the same for fans. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-film-review-9919962.html) - **The New York Times**, Nicolas Rapold (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film vexing, with Bilbo sidelined in favor of destruction and war, and criticizes the emphasis on greed overriding reason and friendship. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/movies/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies.html) - **Sight and Sound**, Henry K. Miller (30/100, inferred): The critic declares a lack of interest in the Tolkien adaptations and finds the film uninvolving, with quasi-robotic characters in a simplistic good-vs-evil struggle. A match-cut linking Bilbo's return home to the earlier trilogy stands out as the most moving moment. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/review-hobbit-battle-five-armies) - **Vulture** (20/100, inferred): The critic argues the film proves Peter Jackson has lost his soul, calling it a bloated mess of inconsequential spectacle that fails to engage with characters or the pointlessness of war. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/12/movie-review-the-hobbit-battle-of-the-five-armies.html) - **HeyUGuys**, Jon Lyus (5/5): The critic calls it a triumphant if flawed end to the saga, a solid and stirring conclusion with hidden emotional force, spectacular battle scenes and strong central performances. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/hobbit-battle-five-armies-review/) - **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it an action-filled and excellent end to Peter Jackson's journey with the Tolkien tales. It highlights the returning cast and the director's long involvement with the material. [Read](https://deadline.com/2014/12/hobbit-review-battle-of-the-five-armies-review-peter-jackson-1201328502/) - **Den of Geek**, Duncan Bowles (4/5): The film is a satisfying ending to the saga and a strong final chapter, ending on a high note with emotional force that matches its visual power. The critic singles out the emotional depth in character relationships, particularly the Tauriel triangle and Thorin’s arc. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review-2/) - **Eye for Film**, Owen Van Spall (60/100, inferred): The critic sees a thrilling yet exhausting spectacle of carnage that smothers the cast and character interaction, though it showcases impressive technical prowess and some strong performances from Freeman, Armitage and McKellen. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-2014-film-review-by-owen-van-spall) - **/Film**, Germain Lussier (4/10): The critic finds it the worst of the Hobbit films: a two-hour string of big action moments without emotional weight, character development or a real arc, feeling like an overstretched final act. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/535190/hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review/) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (D): The critic finds the film a disappointing conclusion to the trilogy, filled with hollow spectacle, poor characterization, and CGI battles that lack emotional stakes, with Bilbo as the sole saving grace. [Read](https://collider.com/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review/) - **The Wrap** (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film lumbering and overstuffed, proving Christopher Tolkien right with its excessive battle scenes, sloppy resolutions, and fan service. Visual details like character designs receive praise amid the overall bloat and lack of emotional resonance. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review-martin-freeman-ian-mckellen-cate-blanchett/) ## Details - **Director:** Peter Jackson - **Director:** Peter Jackson - **Screenplay:** Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh - **Novel:** J. R. R. Tolkien - **Cinematography:** Andrew Lesnie - **Editor:** Jabez Olssen - **Music:** Howard Shore - **Production design:** Dan Hennah - **Costume design:** Bob Buck, Ann Maskrey, Richard Taylor - **Producer:** Carolynne Cunningham, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh - **Cast:** Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey; Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins; Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel; Luke Evans as Bard; Lee Pace as King Thranduil; Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug / Sauron (voice) - **Runtime:** 2h 24m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 17 December 2014 - **Genres:** Action, Adventure, Fantasy - **Budget:** $250 million - **Box office:** $956 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Fv5StfAxA ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, uhd - Apple TV: rent $4.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2015: Best Sound Editing (nominated) - Saturn Awards 2015: Best Fantasy Film (won) ## If you liked this - *The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring* (2001), Fi1m 90: Jackson when he still knew a small person mattered more than a big army — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring.md) - *Ran* (1985), Fi1m 92: Kurosawa’s castle siege shows how a battle can be enormous and still legible — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ran.md) - *Excalibur* (1981), Fi1m 79: Boorman’s Arthur, all green light and clanking plate, with real mud on it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/excalibur.md) - *Princess Mononoke* (1997), Fi1m 88: A fantasy war where every side has reasons and the forest keeps score — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/princess-mononoke.md) - *The Dark Crystal* (1982): Henson’s puppets have more weight than most of Jackson’s pixels --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies