The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Peter Jackson’s 144 minute finale did not exist as a plan until July 2012, when the two part adaptation became a trilogy, and it was titled "There and Back Again" until April 2014. The name was dropped because Bilbo had already reached Erebor in the previous film, which is what this one structurally is: an extended last act. The sharpest break from Tolkien is Bilbo himself. In the novel a hurled stone knocks him unconscious just as the Eagles arrive, so he misses the battle and hears of it afterwards. The film keeps him awake and in the field, removing the book’s central idea of a hero never allowed to be heroic. Cinemas ran both conventional 24 frames per second prints and a 48 frames per second HFR 3D version, and the complaint that the high frame rate looks smooth and televisual followed the trilogy to its last film. The format on your ticket changes what you see. The extended cut adds about twenty more minutes and was rated R in the United States for violence, the only Middle-earth version to carry that rating. Who it is for: viewers finishing the trilogy and anyone who enjoys large scale battle staging. Who it is not for: family viewing with the extended cut, the version to avoid with children present.