Photo: Louise Hatton
The concluding chapter in the concluding Tolkien trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, will be with us in just three short weeks. But dry your tears and hush the lamentations of your kin because **Empire **is taking it out in style with the help of a certain P. Jackson, esquire. Marking the occasion with the kind of money-can't-buy access having the keys to Peter Jackson’s drawers, archives and nerve centre can secure you, the Jackson-curated January issue will be overflowing with Hobbits, Heavenly Creatures and Feebles. There’ll be reunions, glorious artwork and never-seen-before notes.
Of course, at the issue's heart is the not-so-small matter of a Tolkien armageddon that will bring together dwarves, goblins, wargs, men, eagles - hitherto the Ubers of Middle-earth - and a certain shape-shifter to meet, greet and batter the heck out of each other. There’s a dragon at large too, of course, and a sense of one era ending and another more brutal one about to begin for the inhabitants of Middle-earth as the Battle of the Five Armies commences.
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The finale finds the Dwarves, led by Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield, reclaiming the vast wealth of their mountain home of Erebor, but all is definitely not going to go smoothly. In taking back the mountain, they unleashed the terrifying dragon Smaug, who has flown off to attack the humans of the nearby Lake-town after realising that they helped the dwarves.
That’s not all that Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and his comrades have to worry about, because an ancient enemy has returned in force to Middle-earth. The clash with Smaug is just part of the battle, with the Necromancer (AKA Sauron) unleashing his Orc hordes against our heroes.
The full-length trailer is below for your perusal, while the finished article will hit screens big and even bigger on December 12.
For much more on the movie, exclusives on every part of Jackson’s career to date, news of future projects and possibly even a Pint Of Milk with Tom Bombadil (okay, possibly not) when the January issue of **Empire **hits newsagents on Thursday.
To get our limited-edition covers every month - make sure you subscribe to Empire magazine today{