So, right, I watched all three movies in the Hobbit trilogy on Monday, as you know. Since that was more than 24 hours before initial release, I’m a bigger jerk than usual for taking so long to review, and plus also I burned my thoughts on the series as a whole during the previous review about the second movie. So, what can I say about The Battle of the Five Armies without repeating myself and without spoilers of any significance?

Well, lessee. I was, all in all, satisfied with the way things went. All character arcs, both the previously published and the newly contrived, ended on satisfactory notes. All the effects and battle scenes were extremely cool, as was the unexpected Billy Connolly. Unlike the previous movies, there were no scenes that felt gratuitously long, just for the sake of showing off. So, all the people saying this is the best movie of the three? They’re right. It has no new flaws, none of the major flaws of the previous two films, and all kinds of really cool, climactic things happen.

That said, I have one more thing to say about the series as a whole: The overlap between the end of the second movie and the beginning of the third… no, not overlap, but the dividing line. Could not be more awkward if it tried. I know why you can’t just release an 8 or 9 hour long movie, all of a piece. And I know why ending the second movie in the “correct” place would have generated massive confusion as to why there needed to be a third movie. But, man. So awkward.