The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

While Hollywood continued to wrestle with the fallout of the Sony hacking scandal, the weekend box office offered the solace of a moviegoing truism: Hobbits sell.

Tis the season to make Top 10 lists. Why? Because we are hurtling with unavoidable haste toward the end of another calendar year.

For latecomers to the world of Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, here is a legend to the key players.

Peter Jackson made zombie movies so studios could see he had the right stuff to handle J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe. So began his Hero’s Journey.

In 1937 a fairy tale about a reluctant hero with hairy feet was published by a tweedy English academic called JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit was an instant success – and its mighty sequel The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954.

The Desolation of Smaug addressed so much that was wrong with Peter Jackson’s second foray into Middle-Earth, after the light-hearted tonal shift of An Unexpected Journey. It was a more focused beast, with Martin Freeman’s wonderful interpretation of Bilbo placed front and centre into the action. He was a character in genuine peril, rather than one who’d previously been lost amongst any number of indistinguishable personalities thrown around in a visually impressive, but completely weightless CGI fairground ride.

Check here what is next up on the big screen for December.