... third movie. It's a depressing irony that Peter Jackson, an extremely talented craftsman who once made homemade, cheap, extremely lowbrow horror comedies like 1987's Bad Taste and 1992's Dead Alive, is now churning out a bloated, studio-mandated billion-dollar epic about the pernicious influence of greed and excess. This film, like its two predecessors (though unlike the first trilogy), is a self-sustaining piece of intellectual property that couldn't be further from a source novel that valued simplicity, camaraderie, and home over all other things.

This is a three-part review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. For part one, "The Introduction of the Premise," click here. For part two, "The Elaboration of the Theme," click here.