Great action but too long

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2014)

At least some of the magic of Lord of the Rings series is recaptured in the final of the Hobbit trilogy but its length meant we were in the cinema nearly three hours. At least 30 minutes of forbidden elf-dwarf love and weeping over dying dwarfs could have quite easily been edited out, and it would have been a better movie for it. No doubt Peter Jackson was told, "Yes, its awful, but we Have to Appeal to a Female Audience". Which is why the last two Hobbit movies are stuffed with Hollywood schlock. And there is some serious miscasting of the characters involved in the elf-dwarf love sub-plot, which left me totally unconvinced. And was it really necessary to kill so many characters> And what was with those worms anyway? If the producers had stuck more to the book and not tried to pad it out with silly love stories what is merely an interesting movie could have been a classic.