With Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, some fans have complained that the films are way too long given the relatively short length of the book. Those fans will be happy to hear that the new movie, Battle of the Five Armies, will apparently be the shortest of the entire Middle Earth series.
A user on Reddit pointed out that the official IMAX website has updated its listing for The Hobbit to include the run time of the movie: 2 hours and 24 minutes.
That might seem long, but in a series that frequently hits 3 hours, it's kind of surprising to see what's being pitched as the defining moment in the series being far shorter than the rest. For comparison, An Unexpected Journey was 2 hours and 49 minutes, and The Desolation of Smaug was 2 hours and 41 minutes.
Though we're getting about 20 minutes less in the new movie, this is actually probably a good thing for the series. Fans of the book will know that there really isn't that much left in the book, and a lot of readers felt that splitting the 300 page book into three movies would be impossible. So it appears that Peter Jackson was aware of that this time and tried his best to make the third movie a bit leaner than the rest with less content to work with.
Of course, that doesn't mean the third movie won't be just as epic. As Entertainment Weekly reported last month, The Battle of the Five Armies will conclude with a 45 minute long battle sequence. That means about 30% of the movie's running time with be the final battle.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is probably Peter Jackson's last film in the Middle Earth saga, and is being billed as the defining chapter. In the film Sauron will send legions of Orcs to take the Lonely Mountain and the Men, Elves and Dwarves of Middle Earth must try to unite and defeat Sauron's forces. The film opens in theaters on December 17th.