One of the greatest disappointments.

Rating: 5/10 (8 January 2015)

I was really doubting if I should sit down and actually spend time writing about this film, but I realized I am almost obliged to write a proper closure about this trilogy. Unfortunately, as you can already imagine, this film was a great disappointment for me and my Tolkien love. But honestly, I didn't expect anything better. It was actually worse.
We all know how Peter Jackson is famous - or better infamous - about his long, boring shots in his films. He loves stretching generally in his work and he doesn't miss a chance to show it. We have accepted it all these years and when it actually helps the dramatization - like in LOTR - we salute him. But this time it results in excess and exaggeration.
All those long shots and all this overstretched narration doesn't make sense anymore. All those films are made only to satisfy the fans worldwide? I don't think so. Don't let me start over the off- time bad humor and the many awkward moments. No character development except Thorin's, but still it seems it happened very fast and abruptly. Everything just looks out of tune. The only definite thing is that the purpose of these films is completely lost.
The Tolkien literature spirit is completely vandalized by the main story element that struggles to keep up the narration in the film, the fruitless and weak love story of Fili and Tauriel. It doesn't make sense and it will never do in people's eyes and especially the hardcore fans like myself. First huge mistake.
You just can't raise up the standards yourself, winning an Oscar of direction for one of the greatest films ever made and then fall from one mistake to the other. You do not make a movie only for the sake of making it, you need to be good at it, you need to put your soul in it. Second mistake.
And yes we are all tired of the constant show-off of the magnetic special effects. Unfortunately we are sick of all this. It is nice to watch but special effects do not make a movie good. Never. Obviously Jackson acknowledges that and is totally tired of hiding it. This type of negligent behavior. Third and deadly mistake.
However one of the greatest scenes of this trilogy was in this film. The fighting scene with Galandriel and the NazgÃ»l along with Saruman and Elrond was breathtaking and reminded us for some minutes the grandiose LOTR trilogy.
Unfortunately it is very hard for me to accept this film as it it, this trilogy as it was promoted and produced. I don't believe in this kind of cinema anymore and even if I indulge myself to many bad guilty pleasures, this was not even close to one of them. It was boring, unsettling, very long and completely far far away from its initial intentions. The first part definitely carries some of the Tolkien spirit and it is the one I enjoyed the most.
The Lord of The Rings trilogy will always be in my heart for its consistency, its directorial magnificence, its narration, its complexity and of course its story. The Hobbit trilogy just provokes both sadness and disgust in me and I really hope it will be forgotten soon enough. At least we will always have the LOTR trilogy to look up to.
From http://mycinematographies.blogspot.nl