Trolls act as mobile siege engines, ballistas raining death from their shoulders, walls collapsing before bipedal battering rams. From the moment elven warriors vault the dwarven phalanx to eviscerate onrushing orcs, the Bad Taste director revels in carnage with gleeful invention. This, by contrast, is a dirty barroom brawl every hack, stab and gouge felt physically from deep within the scrum. Pelennor Fields was a noble struggle between light and darkness, observed from on high amidst the spires of Minas Tirith. Likewise the rising menace of Sauron is skipped past with startling alacrity to make way for the main event.
Smaug is unleashed and dispatched in a fleeting ten minutes, his brief but spectacular reign of fire cut short by a monologue-stopping arrow. So much so, in fact, that most other material falls by the wayside. Having navigated the barrels, spiders, riddles and ruins, it’s the chance to realise this gigantic, five-way battle royale that clearly prompted Jackson’s return to Tolkien’s world. afterthought into a thunderous melee of interracial warfare. The same cannot be said of Peter Jackson, thankfully, who here concludes his six-part Middle-earth saga by transforming a few pages of J.R.R. “So began a battle that none had expected and it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible.” A spinner of epic tales he may have been, but when it came to The Hobbit’s climactic engagement, Tolkien wasn’t much for showmanship. Warning: minor spoilers for those who have not read the book
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