Good, but different

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2012)

Overall I thought the movie was good, but it didn't have that LOTR feel to it, which is what makes LOTR, well LOTR.
I felt the switch to CGI orcs was bad, they felt fake to me and I did not feel like I was watching a LOTR movie. They should have stuck to the orcs, consisted of prosthesis and real actors like the first 3 films.
Also, the key flaw to this movie is that there is no lead character you can cling onto, it seemed like it was Thorin, who came over as this trilogy's Aragorn to me, but I just did not feel like it was LOTResque. I don't really know how to describe it but I never felt like i was watching a LOTR film. In the first three films there is the whole atmosphere surrounding the characters that is so emotional and heavy and that is why the first three films were so amazing. Also, going along with my latest point, there wasn't any really emotional music pieces, the only one was the "misty mountain" one in the shire, and I really enjoyed that part, it felt like LOTR to me. But for example in the Fellowship my favorite parts are the piece right after Gandalf dies and when Frodo asks Aragorn, "Would you destroy it?" in Amen-Hen because you can hear Sauron speaking to Aragorn, but Aragorn isn't tempted and closes Frodo's hand and says "I would have gone with you to the end, into the very fires of Mordor." And that showed what kind of a character Aragorn was, but in AUJ you don't have those touching scenes that define the characters, excpet when Bilbo decides not to kill Gollum, and that part really stood out to me. So basically what I'm saying is that no character stood out to me and they all kind of blended together, unlike the first three films.