Decent film

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2013)

Its not as bad as some say, but its not as good as the LOTR films were.
The bad:
The stunts were ridiculous. The characters survived unbelievable circumstances, and goblin-town was cartoon-ish. One of the things that was wonderful about the LOTR was that few, if any of the stunts were crazy. The only ones which defied Human ability were done by Legolas, and he isn't human. But here people are surviving rock slides, jumping into other trees while the tree they are in is falling, going swinging on wooden platforms hooked onto ropes, etc. The CGI was a bit too glamorous, although not that bad. The camera was too unrealistic, it was swooping around like a video game. In LOTR, the camera usually stays on the ground, or does a magnificent areal shot, there are some fancy cool camera acrobatics but nothing like they are in the Hobbit. Some of the changes were terrible. Having Thorin hate the elves, (he almost threw Orcrist away when he heard it was an elven blade!), is really bad. Nothing like the book. Some of the characters, such as Azog, were rather poorly done. Other than that, it was good. The action was exiting, the dialog wasn't bad, it wasn't too slow moving. I recommend it overall.