Director Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy will come to a close in just over a month's time, and an appropriate sense of impending finality persists in the latest trailer. The new footage from The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies contains the dozen or so trolls and elves and wizards we've come to know in the franchise's previous two installments, and finds each and every one of them dealing with impossibly high stakes.

The trailer also includes war bats, war trolls and armies that would make the ones glimpsed in Jackson's previous trilogy-capper, 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, look quaint. Series stars Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Evangeline Lilly and Orlando Bloom all take part in the event that, as the trailer notes, will be the "defining moment of the Middle-earth legend."

You can check out the full trailer below. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies opens on December 17.