The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

The title promises five armies, and the battle goes on so long you start counting them like sheep. This is less a movie than a third act with its own poster. Legolas runs up a bridge of falling stones like gravity is just a suggestion. A weaselly sidekick from Lake-town gets more screen time than most of the dwarves, which is a choice. A dwarf lord rides in on a war pig, and honestly, that part rules. The good stuff is all in the quiet scenes. Richard Armitage plays Thorin’s gold madness like a man slowly being eaten by his own greed, and Martin Freeman says more with one worried look than the battle says in an hour. It still made $962.7 million worldwide. At 144 minutes it’s the shortest of the trilogy and somehow feels the longest. A 5.1 because the heart is real and it’s buried under a pile of digital orcs. $44.52 says you can’t name more dwarves than Thorin, Balin and the one in the floppy hat.

What works: Martin Freeman’s Bilbo and Richard Armitage’s slide into gold madness give the film its only real weight.

What doesn’t: The battle runs so long and leans so hard on weightless digital armies that the big emotional moments lose their punch.

Who it’s for: Completists who need to finish what they started, and fans who just want to see a dwarf ride a pig.