The dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), have settled back into their onetime home.

Once that conflict ends, we go back at the mountain, where almost all the action of the movie takes place. The townsfolk are in the midst of fleeing their homes and with good reason when Smaug arrives, he promptly starts laying waste to the village via the fire he exhales. ‘Five Armies’ picks up where last year’s stronger ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ left off, with the namesake dragon leaving Lonely Mountain and headed for nearby Lake-town. Yet, to be fair, a reasonably entertaining one. It feels like a running out of the clock, a going through of the motions.

Tolkien’s 1937 novel ‘The Hobbit’ and coming after but set before three other – and better – films set in Tolkien’s imaginative realm, ‘Five Armies’ feels wholly unspectacular. But as the last of three movies that serve as Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R.