Meh.

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2014)

This movie will come off as a no surprise to anyone who's seen the previous two. If you've seen those, you know what to expect. If you liked them, you'll be just as fine with this one, but if you didn't, you'll be just as disappointed by this conclusion.
That said, the movie does fix one flaw of its predecessors- that is the pacing. If in the previous two I found myself at times waiting for a boring scene to end just so we could get to something interesting, this movie rarely drags its feet. It's almost nonstop action. The name is appropriately picked- as most of the movie IS fighting. But amidst the things getting whacked with weapons, there was very little time dedicated to any plot or character development.
Speaking of plot, the whole movie is essentially just a two and a half hour wrap up to the many loose plot points of the previous two. It kicks off with the first fifteen minutes of battling the dragon, which really should have been the ending of the last movie. It feels oddly out of place and is over far too quickly, disposing of Smaug in less than satisfying manner. The subsequent reclamation of the city by the dwarfs and Thorin's corruption is rushed. In the original trilogy, I fully believed the way the Ring corrupted Frodo. In this one, it seems that Thorin goes into the mountain and instantly becomes a douchebag to everyone. It doesn't flow well. And it doesn't make you feel any sympathy for the character, as with Frodo. But it serves to kick off the events of the battle itself. As for secondary plot lines, Gandalf's sidequest serves little more than to reveal an enemy we've known all along and provides an opportunity for a cameo for three characters from the original trilogy and the Ringwraiths. Which, you guessed it, feels unnecessary. Another thing in the realm of unnecessary is Tauriel the Not in the Book's romantic subplot with Kili the dwarf, that no one asked for in the second movie and no one wanted to take so much screen time in the third. But instead of going for actual events in the book, the movie spawns a sort of romantic triangle between the two and Legolas (another unnecessary cameo) who leads Tauriel on a sidequest to deal with his personal nemesis, CGI Orc the 2nd (I forget his actual name). Thoring also, unsurprisingly, gets to set things straight with Bolg.
Speaking of unnecessary characters, they once again take the focus off the characters I WOULD actually like to know something about, like, oh you know, the twelve dwarfs that we've been with from the beginning? But no. Peter Jackson continues to amaze by probably being the only director in the world who can have a character be in a trilogy that's almost 10 hours long altogether, and not give him a single line. Really. Some of the dwarfs- the majority, in fact, never speak. Or really do anything either. The only ones we get to know a little (not enough) about are Thorin, Kili the romance interest, Balin the old wise guy, Dwalin the tough but reasonable bald guy and Fili the brother of Kili (that's all we ever find out about him). The others, well, I didn't even remember their names from the first two movies and I don't feel I've missed out on much. Hell, Thorin's cousin Dane shows up halfway through the movie and manages to show more character than most of those other dwarfs, whom, like I said, have been with us from the very beginning. It's a stark contrast to the original Fellowship. As for other characters, Bard's scenes are frequently ruined by the horrible, HORRIBLE and despicable side character that's, I guess, is supposed to be a comic relief, but his lines and scenes didn't draw a single laugh from the audience and in fact, felt embarrassing to watch. A bad attempt at humor if ever there was one. And the one character that COULD actually provide an honest laugh, you know, the main character who's in the title of the movie? Bilbo, played wonderfully by Martin Freeman? Oh he's still in the movie, but not much really.
So that concludes the characters. Now from a technical perspective, the movie is, in my eyes, bad. The high framerate flows smoothly, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that everything looks fake. The battle scenes are boring, with copy-paste characters hacking each other with blunt weapons and the bloodless beheadings are laughable at best. What happened to the mature tone of the original movies? The movie also gives a big middle finger to the laws of physics- which, of course, is expected to a certain extent in a movie about fantasy, but some of those are still inexcusable to the point of ridiculous. But all of these points were present in the last two movies too- the only example of impeccable CGI in the entire trilogy is Smaug the dragon and Gollum's cameo. Well done there, but everything else looks like a video game. And not a very good one at that.
So that's pretty much it. That's what this movie is. An almost 3 hour non stop cgi fest that wraps up the previous two movies, both the things we liked and the things we hated. It does that, but does it do it well? Not particularly. None of the plot points really come to a satisfying conclusion. I still got the warm and fuzzy feeling in the ending, but only because it plays to the nostalgia for the original trilogy, by tying the ending of this movie to the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring. If this was a good Hobbit movie, it would have been an ending worthy of tears. It's not a good movie, though, so it's simply a cherry topping on a bland tasting cake.