What was Peter Jackson thinking?

Rating: 4/10 (22 December 2014)

After 3 great movies (The Lord Of The Rings) and 2 good ones (The Hobbit), the last one of the Hobbit trilogy was a huge anticlimax. Perhaps my expectations where to high.
The film can be summed up in 2 words: "fighting" and "dying". But both of those concepts did not convince me. There is little or no overview in the fighting part. Smaug is literally killed before the opening credits and the real sense of dread absent at all times.
Dying just - takes - too - damn - long. (and there is a lot of it)
Next to these two concepts there were two other things that I found very annoying. The first one was the recycling of "wording" used in the first trilogy, as if people of Middle-Earth have a limited vocabulary and have to re-use entire phrases to say something.
The second one was the deviation of book. Sometimes this comes out OK. (Gandalf against Sauron), but what are Legolas and Tauriel doing? OK, Legolas could be partially understanding. The biggest error, however, in this entire trilogy, must have been the love between Kili and Tauriel. If you read Tolkien, this is not done, at all. (even love between man and elf is frowned upon and in the time span of 4 ages rarely occurred). To me, this part goes against the entire idea or concept that Tolkien must have had about Middle-Earth.
The movie is a dragged out 2,5 hour journey of miserable story telling. And although you probably want to go see for yourself anyway, make sure to lower your expectations significantly. Perhaps it might just become bearable.