Better Late than Never

Rating: 8/10 (20 February 2016)

I give AUJ, a 8.5/10 and 2nd strongest film of Hobbit Trilogy, comparable to The Fellowship of the Ring, but more on the mild side, wasn't a doomsday film, like TFOTR.
Strengths:
*Peter Jackson, Returning Director *Returning Cast, Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, Galadriel, Lord Elrond,
Gollum, and Sauraman *LOTR Connection and tie-ins to that Trilogy, "ride the LOTR wave" *December Release Date, 10 years + beyond LOTR Trilogy, "hunger for middle earth renewed" *15-20 lead roles, amazing work to mesh together so many personalities, and give most of them a lot of emotional attachment to us, the audience. Just remembering the names is a challenge, much less everything else. *Smaug to close out film *Origin of Sting *Riddles in the Dark *Lonely Mountain *The One Ring to Hobbits *King Goblin and the Goblin Tunnels *Dwarve and Elf dynamic *A New Wizard introduced
Weaknesses:
*The CGI to set Ratio wasn't as favorable as LOTR, it was a bit out of balance. *It followed LOTR Trilogy, massive bias that these films couldn't possibly compare or be as good as the LOTR, about half moviegoers in my opinion "prejudged the film" unfairly because of its timing. *Because AUJ followed LOTR,a second weakness of this was that in order to pacify the fan base (mentioned above), the films weren't independent enough, to much leaning on the strength of the original LOTR Trilogy, and to much leaning on the material from the the LOTR appendices as well, these movies weren't made in the light of the books. To much effort was put into making the Hobbit a LOTR Film.