The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the last Hobbit movie. Peter Jackson, the director, split the book, The Hobbit, into three movies: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and the last movie, The Battle of the Five Armies. It is a tale of a Hobbit, a hobbit is also known as a halfling. His name is Bilbo Baggins. His story starts in The Shire in a hole in the ground. “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole.”

The beginning of the movie starts out with the action from the previous movie. Which continues until the dragon Smaug, the entire second movie focuses on, is slain. Much of the movie is action and fighting based, both physical and verbal. The people of Middle-Earth argue about the treasure, mentioned in the next paragraph, inside the mountain while the orcs want, and physically fight, to gain control because it is a vantage point in Middle-Earth. The elves, men, and dwarves team up to stop the orcs with the help of the Eagles.

Since the thirteen dwarves and Bilbo have made it inside The Lonely Mountain, Thorin Oakenshield, the heir to the throne and referred to as king under the mountain and king of Durin’s folk, searches for his long beloved heart of the mountain, often referred to as the Arkenstone. He is on the hunt for it, with Bilbo as his burglar, and because the dragon is away from the mountain and has perished, he can freely spend a majority of his and his peoples’ time looking for it. The Arkenstone is portrayed throughout the book and movies as the king’s stone.

The elves from The Woodland Realm, or Mirkwood, come to take back precious jewels that belong to them. Thranduil, the King of the Woodland Realm, brings an army and is ready to fight and sacrifice the lives of his soldiers for these jewels. Thorin refuses to give up any precious metals or jewels or anything of significance.

Thorin turns jealous and untrusting and greedy. He wanted all the gold to stay in the mountain with himself, instead of giving the promised gold to the people of Lake Town and returning Thranduil’s family’s jewels. He would spend hours in the gold room, where the dragon originally slept for years. Thorin became his grandfather personality wise because his grandfather was greedy and gold turned the kindest of dwarves evil in a sense.

The fighting soon starts after a confrontation with the people of Lake Town, a town at the bottom of the mountain that was destroyed by the dragon and orcs. Thorin’s cousin runs, literally, into the clearing in front of the entrance to the mountain and leads his men to defend the mountain against orcs when the orcs make their way into the clearing to take over the mountain. At this point the five armies, the Dwarves, the Elves, Men, Orcs, and the Eagles, want something to do with the mountain, either to take control or to snatch a piece of gold. As the dwarves are lead to fight, they, unexpectedly by most, crouch in a line and they overlap as well, creating a larger, stronger, taller defense. This seems silly until the elves fighting for Thranduil literally jump over and start slaying the orcs one by one until the end of the battle.

At the end of the movie, Thranduil and Legolas have a talk about a ranger in the north who is known in the wild as Strider. Legolas is intrigued and marches off to find this character named Strider, son of Arathorn by the way. Bilbo goes home and the movie cuts forward 60 years and there’s Bilbo on his one-hundred and eleventieth (111th) birthday when he is writing a book recalling the adventures he just partook on. He calls for Frodo, his nephew, to get the door just like the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Personally throughout the entire movie, I was very excited. I knew the movie was going to be good but I did not expect the battle to be epic or for tears to fall. I just have a couple complaints.

Peter Jackson added a character named Tauriel. She was not in the book, he did it for the romantic effect he was aiming for between her and Kili, a dwarf. Jackson had the audacity to have Legolas grow unrequited romantic feelings toward her as well. With the book, I like the fact that only characters are male, aside from Lady Galadriel and smaller characters that are mostly irrelevant. Then, I understand that the dragon dies early in the third part of the book but Peter Jackson could have ended the second movie with them entering the mountain and then transferred the last fifteen maybe twenty minutes over into the third movie.

Now, these are not the only differences but they are the biggest that I disliked. Other than those, I was happy with the movie. Five out of five stars, two thumbs up. Both the book and the movie were great. I recommend seeing the movie and reading the book. Just because it made me cry does not mean it will make you cry. Go see it.