A complete train wreck devoid of anything Tolkien

Rating: 4/10 (23 December 2014)

I once had respect for Peter Jackson, before this abysmal Hobbit trilogy. Now I can see he has fallen from grace, much like the Ringwraiths, once great kings of men who were corrupted by greed.
Sure, parts of the movie are entertaining. I enjoyed MOST of the Laketown scene with Smaug. Then it's on to the title "Battle of Five Armies" where the movie starts to go downhill...fast. Action scenes are so frequent, with the characters performing feats so physically impossible, that I found myself saying (and often out loud) "Give me a break." These fight scenes are so poorly choreographed, and utterly unbelievable, that the audience quickly loses touch with any sense of reality in the film. The computer effects, while occasionally quite good, are also pretty bad in other areas, particular in some of the more ridiculous fight scenes with Legolas.
The main problem I had with the film is the utter desecration of Tolkien's beloved work. Jackson has piled on so much CRAP: Giant earthworms, giant bats, giant mountain goats, Tarial (or however the hell you spell her name), Azog, a terrible romantic subplot, etc, etc, etc. He devotes so much more time to ADDED parts of the story than he does to contents that actually happened in the book. And on top of that, after this horribly tedious battle sequence, the movie doesn't even have an ending! Gone is the scene where we see Thorin buried under the Lonely Mountain with the Arkenstone. Jackson over-rushes the ending so much, we see no resolution whatsoever. What happened to all the treasure? Who became king of Dale? Where did those earthworms even go after the start of the battle? There were way too many plot holes.
Strangely, the only thing that worked was the acting, particularly from Bilbo and Thorin. Most of there scenes together were solid, though Bilbo was treated like a minor character even more so than Legolas (who wasn't even in the book and is annoying as hell in this movie). I could go on and on about what a failure this is, what a Michael Bay like piece of Hollywood crap, but I won't waste anymore time on this travesty.