Don't bother

Rating: 3/10 (12 January 2015)

I did not enjoy this movie at all. Unfortunately, when you take what is a short section of a book, and try to turn it into an exceptionally long movie, what you end with is not worth watching.
As an avid Hobbit fan (the book), I've watched the first two with trepidation. Usually after watching the movie, we dissect the deviations from the book, and whether or not they were useful. And then ask my siblings (who've not read the books) how the movies fared as a movie, not as a book adaption. With the first two, the response is usually "They were good" from non-book readers, and from book-readers, it was a case of "they were okay, should have stuck more to the actual story and not add in random characters" With this final movie - all of us agreed that the movie sucked. 20 minutes into the movie, the climax happens (smaug is killed), and then you are left with a very long, drawn out, boring battle. Now all of the movies (hobbit and LOTR) have moments where you think "yeah right, as if that could happen", but given that they're fantasy, you let it slide. The Battle of 5 Armies has so many of those moments that it's impossible to actually do much other than roll your eyes the entire movie.
Death scenes should not be drawn out so long either. I'm watching a movie, not going to the opera where people take 30 minutes to die.
And if you add in a female character to balance out the male-ness of the movie, don't then transform her from a strong warrior into a sobbing love-ridden, useless girl.
All in all - this movie was a waste of time. Such a disappointment. Jackson would have been better cutting out 2 hours of this movie, and having 30 minutes added to the end of the last one. That would have been sufficient!