I think that “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” (2014) is the best of Peter Jackson’s prequel trilogy, and not only because of its predictably terrific climactic battle.  I’d give this movie a 9 out of 10.

First, it’s less cartoonish and far more adult than its predecessors, in everything from its themes to its fight choreography.  (Compare the beautifully staged final melees here, for example, with that Warner Brothers-esque sequence in the second film, in which the dwarves dance across barrels and river rapids to repel their orc pursuers.)

It also seems like a better peek at a larger fantasy universe, with different races, armies and cultures working at cross purposes before needing to align, and with more than one protagonist’s real failings factoring in to that.

And … HOT DAMN!  That’s GOTTA be the greatest depiction of a dragon I’ve ever seen.  One small quibble I’ve had throughout all of Jackson’ Tolkien films was that the stories’ antagonists sometimes seemed too silly and clownish to be truly menacing.  (The orcs, trolls and goblins seemed cartoonish and are too easily defeated by beings sometimes half their height; only the Nazguls and the Uruk-Hai hybrids managed to impress.)  Jackson’s depiction of Smaug ravaging Laketown makes dragons look like Middle Earth’s equivalent of a goddam nuclear device.

[Edit: I just realized that in both this film and NBC’s “Hannibal,” the amazing Richard Armitage costars with a “Red Dragon.]