After three Hobbit movies and three Lord of the Rings films, it’s hard to view The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies as a standalone picture.  It carries far more weight than it necessarily should, and as the presumed final film in the Lord of the Rings saga it has higher expectations than perhaps are fair.  So while it’s a film that can be both thrilling and emotional while also plodding and uneven, its place in the saga serves to magnify both its faults and its virtues as a representation of the successes and failures of the Hobbit trilogy and the LOTR saga as a whole.  Narratively, it serves as both and end (to The Hobbit) and a beginning (to Lord of the Rings), but it’s status as a link doesn’t detract from the big dramatic moments of the film’s story, even if at times it feels designed more as a link than as a cinematic experience of its own.

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