Nerd alert. Having originally titled the final (hopefully) chapter in his Hobbit trilogy There and Back Again, Peter Jackson today announced that he’d decided to give it a decidedly flashier title: The Battle of the Five Armies. “There and Back Again felt like the right name for the second of a two film telling of the quest to reclaim Erebor, when Bilbo’s arrival there, and departure, were both contained within the second film,” Jackson wrote on Facebook. “But with three movies, it suddenly felt misplaced—after all, Bilbo has already arrived ‘there’ in the Desolation of Smaug.”
Fair enough. In any case, there’s reason to be hopeful. While the first Hobbit film was a bit of a slog, The Desolation of Smaug picked up significantly. Still, neither of the Hobbit films have touched the pristine excellence of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so here’s hoping number three, The Battle of the Five Armies, is a charm …