Similar Stories to Review: 'the Hobbit' Wraps With A Middle-earth Melee on Bing News

The sheer size of Jackson's accomplishment — a majestic, fully realized fantasy world, from its lush landscapes down to its hairy feet — is enough to make Cecil B. DeMille blush. Across craggy mountaintops and through enchanted forests, he has set his hobbits, elves and wizards scampering to and fro, always under the threat of greed, ego and selfishness. "The Hobbit" might have been a nice little prequel add-on to "The Lord of the Rings," but by dividing it into three movies, Jackson and company have drained the book's dramatic momentum. The first, "An Unexpected Journey," remains in one's memory only for its clown-car introduction of the 13 dwarfs in an interminable dinner scene I fear is just now approaching dessert. After five films of relentless forward motion, its characters always in perpetual flight, Jackson's "Hobbit" has, as if out of gas, plopped down at the Lonely Mountain. The Battle of the Five Armies, a Warner Bros.