Not without its flaws but still serves as a great sendoff to the middle earth saga.

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2014)

So here we are, the last we'll see of middle earth on the big screen. Being a major fan of LOTR trilogy and having liked the previous two Hobbit films, the feels of goodbye was indeed high when watching this film, not to mention there were some really emotional scenes in the movie.
It picks up exactly where the last film left off, with Smaug flying to Laketown. I gotta say, it was one hell of an opening sequence. Then the story boils down to a slow paced conflict with the impending battle owing to the film's name slowly coming closer. Almost all of the second half of the film involves the battle and events in it. The movie had some really spectacular scenes, my favorite being rescue of Gandalf. That scene was filled with awesomeness.
Performances from the main characters were yet again great while many of the rest were a mixed bag. Martin Freeman(Bilbo) and Richard Armitage (Thorin) really carried the film emotionally with their great performance.
All was not well I'm afraid, the stretching of the source material is yet again glaringly apparent just like the last part. Lots of filler content, which, for the most part, just hampers the pacing and isn't interesting enough. The pointless love triangle was again pointless and dragged on. The 2 hour and 20 min runtime could have been shaved a lot to remove such extra stuff, I don't know why Peter Jackson insists these movies should be long when the source material itself is limited unlike LOTR.
Also, the overuse of CGI again was an issue. It is not that the CGI itself was bad as some stuff looked great, it is that they didn't used it well, like they lazily implemented it all. You can't expect to throw everything at the screen and expect it to look good. Lots of areas had fakey feeling and you could tell that green screen was used etc. This issue has been persistent in this trilogy.
The battle of the five armies was a long ass sequence but even with all the new tech and story material at hand (Five armies, DAMN), it didn't had THE FEEL of battles from LOTR, especially since the accompanying soundtrack is nowhere near as good. The claim that it will be the biggest and best battle done yet by the creators clearly falls short.
Despite its many shortcomings, it was an entertaining ride with some great scenes and serves as a sendoff to this middle earth saga. The tie-ins with LOTR were great. Now, I can watch all of them in sequence, Hobbit trilogy first, then LOTR. A MEGA MIDDLE EARTH MARATHON.
8/10