I have to admit that I was not expecting much when I went to watch the movie, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. I thought I would get a great visual epic on screen with a lot of CGI.  I did get all of that. To my pleasant surprise, I also got a richness of story that I did not get in the previous installment ” The Desolation of Smaug.” which was an empty shell of a movie.

The characters were so much more well developed in the Five Armies where  I felt invested in these heroes that I loved and whom I was familiar with from my reading of the classic as a youth that the movie was based on and made.

So Bilbo Baggins journey reaches its epic conclusion with heroic proportions in this movie.

It has the moving warmth with themes of friendship, good over evil,  and the sacrifices made a midst the weakness that comes with human frailty.  We also see it comes at great cost to our beloved Hobbit which is unveiled in more details in the Lord of the Rings series,

These tales fill our imagination and Peter Jackson has now immortalized them in film. I am glad that this last film in the series is satisfactory and memorable..