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And we mustn’t forget the Bats (and the Ravens?) too. There’s Gandalf the Wizard and of course Bilbo the Hobbit. Our other belligerents play less of a role in the battle, but don’t fit into any of the five groups. And what of Beorn? Although he arrives alone at the last hour, he plays a key role in retrieving the injured Thorin and killing Bolg of the North. What about the Eagles who turn the tide? Considering their appearance represents the great eucatastrophic moment of the battle surely they deserve to be counted amongst the five? Apparently not. The five armies refer to the Goblins, Wolves, Elves, Men and Dwarves. Upon one side were the Goblins and the Wild Wolves, and upon the other were Elves and Men and Dwarves. So began a battle that none had expected and it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible. Tolkien, in contrast, makes it quite clear in the book ( The Annotated Hobbit, ed. Unless the extended edition changes this when it’s released – presumably in November 2015 – viewers will have to decide for themselves which groups Peter Jackson considered one of the five armies. In his review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, David Bratman makes the astute observation that the title of the film goes unexplained.

Posted by Daniel Helen at 18:00 on 27 December 2014

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