Thank God it's finally over

After a long, tedious and not-so-unexpected journey, we have finally reached the end destination. “The Battle of the Five Armies” is the concluding film in Peter Jackson's “The Hobbit” trilogy. It's the most LOTR-like of the three Bilbo flicks, LOTR as in Jackson's interpretation of Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings”.

It has all the ingredients which made some of us like LOTR back in the days: monsters, Orc armies, amazing special effects, yuge battles and one Gandalf. Essentially, it's LOTR all over again, while the two previous films in the Bilbo cycle felt more like a prologue to the inevitable Battle to End All Battles. The biggest disappointment was that Sauron was dispensed with pretty quickly by Wizards & Elves United in a single scene.

We also learn that Thandruil rides an Irish Elk, that Hobbits auction off the belongings of somebody who has been missing more than six months, and that Azog the Defiler (the Orc leader) is White! Still, that *is* logical, since at least one faction of the Orcs in Tolkien's original story symbolizes the SS… Once again, the Ents have been excluded from the drama, thank Illúvatar.

I'm not really sure how to rate this Jacksonite extravaganza, but in the end, I will graciously give it four stars – in return for *my* part of the treasure, of course!