July 19, 2014 -- This final chapter in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth series is darker and more sinister than any of the others. That seems to be the order of the day, but at least there are no suicides in it, well, not exactly.

This movie seems to be one long war, without much of a setup, unlike the excellent battle setup in “The Two Towers.” Remember foreshadowing, buildups, anticipation? There isn't much of that in this film, just war from end to end, with individual battles along the way, like Bard (Luke Evans reprising his role from the last film in the trilogy, as are all the characters mentioned in this review) against Smaug, the dragon, Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) against Sauron (Benedict Cumberbatch who also does the voice of Smaug) and Thorin (Richard Armitage) against Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett).

I don't remember this battle of five armies in the book, but then it's been 40 years since I read it, so I looked it up, and no, it isn't in the book, at least not like this. In the book, it is barely mentioned, but in the film, the war is the main thing. Director Peter Jackson does a fine job with the many battle scenes. You get a good sense of the layout of the battle, the position of the armies and the strategy Azog has attacking the men, dwarves and elves.

The rest of the film is disappointing, however. Most of the relationships between the characters don't really come across as convincing. The truth is, none of these films really measures up to any of the “Lord of the Rings” films, even though all six films were made by the same people. There is very little lightness or comic relief in this latest film, except for the cockroach-type scoundrel, Alfrid (Ryan Gage). The other delightfully selfish scoundrel in the film, the Master of Laketown, played by Stephen Fry, is unfortunately eliminated early in the film.

Watching these films, you would never know they were derived from a fairly light, short, amiable book aimed at children. These films are enough to give children nightmares. This film is very dark, violent and it dwells at length on greed and selfishness. It does serve as an introduction to a much better trilogy of films, that is, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which ties directly into this trilogy both in this film, and into the first film of the trilogy, “An Unexpected Journey.”

The other disappointing thing about this Hobbit trilogy is that through all 9.2 hours, the filmmakers never managed to develop any character, other than Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) in such a way to give the audience much reason to invest any emotion in these characters. There is an attempt to develop a kind of romantic triangle between Legolas (Orlando Bloom) Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and Kili (Aidan Turner) but this isn't convincing and these relationships are tossed overboard in the final film anyway.

One scene I did like is a final scene between the Elf King, Thranduil (Lee Pace) and Tauriel near the end of the film. Thranduil, who had considered himself, an immortal, to be above the affairs of men and dwarves, haughty and aloof, appears to be changed, brought low by what has befallen his elves in battle. Unlike most of the other characters in the film, his character actually has an arc. It changes. A lot more character development and character arcs would have helped the film. This is a good action film, but it lacks character. This film rates a C+.

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