Final 'Hobbit' Movie Gets a New Title: 'The Battle of the Five Armies'

The third and final Hobbit movie has a new name, and it’s not going back again.

Now titled The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Peter Jackson’s cinematic finale originally carried the full subtitle of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 book, The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

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Jackson explained it in a Facebook post on Thursday:

There and Back Again felt like the right name for the second of a two-film telling … but with three movies, it suddenly felt misplaced—after all, Bilbo has already arrived “there” in the Desolation of Smaug.

Though he's spinning this as a purely creative choice, no doubt marketing is at play here: Battle of the Five Armies is certainly a more action-packed sounding title, as it references the epic siege of the Lonely Mountain, where the dwarves are holed up with their treasure following the death of the dragon Smaug. But the men of Dale and the elves join forces with the dwarves after discovering that they are being marched upon by a host of goblins and their wolf-like wargs. Read more...