A mixed bag of feelings

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2014)

I came into this movie with pretty high expectations, after having liked the first one more than everyone else and really liking the second one apart from some goofy moments. However, when I walked out of the cinema, I couldn't help being disappointed in this movie. I've got the feeling Peter Jackson was like: "But the movie still needs this, and this, and all that too!", sometimes it pays of, but most of the time it just feels tacked on because he could. Also the amount of references this movie makes to the Lord of the Rings is just too much, as if no one knew about those movies and we needed to be reminded every few minutes. But the biggest problem I had with this movie is that, at quite a few occasions, this movie felt like a parody of the Lord of the Rings, and not like it's own movie. Like it didn't know if it wants to follow the dark tone of the Lord of the Rings or the lighter tone that the book has.
SPOILER PART: Alfrid pretty much sums up all that's bad about this movie: he's laughably bad and so irritating I wished he would just die in the opening scene. The comic relief in this movie was timed really badly in my opinion (or it was just bad and not meant to be funny). Thorin's death however, was a scene that really got me and saved the movie for me. The battle scenes aren't as good as the Lord of the Rings, but they're still pretty good a few things aside. The ending was also pretty good, with finally a good reference to the Lord of the Rings. So if you're a fan I would definitely go see it for yourself and be your own judge.