The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: December 17, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 46 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
22
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
TimeRichard CorlissDec 16, 2014
If The Hobbit doesn't equal the achievement of Jackson's earlier Middle-earth movies -- and, honestly, what could? -- it is still, in sum, a thrilling effort. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesBruce IngramDec 15, 2014
Fighting — presented with Jackson’s usual double helpings of visual splendor, emotional oomph and low-key comedy — is what Battle of the Five Armies is all about. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 15, 2014
The best film of The Hobbit's three, this final installment is closer in quality to "The Lord of the Rings" than to its immediate predecessors. Read full review
83
HitfixDrew McWeenyDec 1, 2014
By focusing on a few key emotional arcs instead of making it about every shot being the BIGGEST THING OF ALL TIME, Jackson gives the battle a sense of urgency that builds and ebbs, builds and ebbs. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 18, 2014
Now, thanks to this last film, in 3-D, the pleasure is intense, and mixed with awe. There is majesty here, and not just because we’re in the presence of magnificently regal madness. Read full review
80
EmpireJames DyerDec 1, 2014
A fitting conclusion to Jackson’s prequel trilogy and a triumphant adieu to Middle-earth. Now complete, The Hobbit stands as a worthy successor to The Lord Of The Rings, albeit one that never quite emerges from its shadow. Read full review
80
Total FilmRichard EdwardsDec 1, 2014
Despite the warmongering title, focusing on the action would be doing The Battle Of The Five Armies a disservice. Even at its most talky, it's compelling stuff, reaping the rewards of characters built-up over two-and-a-bit movies (sometimes more), all of them flawed and with a convincing agenda. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 1, 2014
The final stretch of The Battle of the Five Armies possesses a warm, amiable, sometimes rueful mood that proves ingratiating and manages to magnify the good and minimize the bad of the trilogy. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovDec 17, 2014
The performances have remained continuously excellent throughout The Hobbit trilogy, and they remain so here; likewise Howard Shore’s score, which is particularly righteous – bloodthirsty when it needs to be, keening when a particularly major character is cut down. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 17, 2014
Like everything else in Jackson's Tolkienland, the buildup to the climactic melee stretches on too long. But when it comes, it's a doozy. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianJeff BakerDec 16, 2014
The "Hobbit" trilogy started slowly and ended with a rush, heroes and villians fighting it out over a mountain of gold. What kid of any age can resist that? Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 16, 2014
OK, Mr. Jackson, you proved your point by landing the finish. Now please, no more Middle-earth, ever. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 16, 2014
The final installment of the Hobbit trilogy is the best, featuring more spectacular action scenes as well as the series' most emotionally resonant moments. Read full review
75
The PlaylistDrew TaylorDec 2, 2014
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is easily the best film of the new trilogy, more entertaining and energetic and tonally in sync with Jackson's earlier, edgier work, shifting from berserker comedy to abject horror at a moment's notice (and then back again). Read full review
75
Slant MagazineRichard Scott LarsonDec 1, 2014
These films, and Tolkien's entire oeuvre, are most affecting in their depictions of friendship, and the performances here represent plutonic male intimacy in convincing, often moving ways. Read full review
70
The DissolveTasha RobinsonDec 16, 2014
At 144 minutes, Five Armies is the shortest and the least bloated and discursive of the Hobbit films. It’s also the one that relies least on filler material and extra character business, and the one that most earns its moments of outsized, dire drama. Read full review
70
VarietyScott FoundasDec 1, 2014
If none of the Hobbit films resonate with "Rings'" mythic grandeur, it’s hard not to marvel at Jackson’s facility with these characters and this world, which he seems to know as well as John Ford knew his Monument Valley, and to which he here bids an elegiac adieu. Read full review
69
Paste MagazineScott WoldApr 3, 2018
So, then, what makes it the “best” entry? The more severe Rings-tone that Jackson has been attempting to graft on top of the (mostly) whimsical original source makes the most sense here. Also—and at the risk of coming off as pedantic—it’s because, technically, it’s the shortest of the three. Read full review
67
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 16, 2014
The Hobbit concludes as it began: in a welter of continuous action, with characters who have become archetypes but seldom rise above that level, and with a host of ideas J.R.R. Tolkien didn't put into his short novel. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithDec 16, 2014
It’s adequately visionary, it’s routinely spectacular, it breathes fire and yet somehow feels room-temperature. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 16, 2014
Jackson’s storytelling at this point is so driven by green-screen trickery and digital legerdemain that he seems to have forgotten about human emotion. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyDec 16, 2014
There are some wonderful sequences in Battle of the Five Armies, and the attention to detail is breathtaking (each different space rendered with thrilling complexity), but the film feels more like a long drawn-out closing paragraph rather than (like "The Desolation of Smaug") a vibrant stand-alone piece of the story. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreDec 16, 2014
It’s the best film of this trilogy, but truthfully, none of the “Hobbit” thirds have been any better than middling “Hunger Games” or “Harry Potter” installments. Considering the vaunted reputation J.R.R.Tolkien enjoys, this overdone “There and Back Again” never quite got us there. Read full review
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