Like Bad Popcorn

Rating: 4/10 (29 December 2014)

Like bad popcorn with too much "golden liquid" added... this movie is fun for awhile, but ultimately leaves you with a sick, bloated feeling. And, bloated this movie is. Smaug dies early on in the movie, and the whole movie is basically one prolonged battle scene. While the battle starts out well, with lots of promising buildup, it rapidly descends into unbelievable nonsensical coincidental freakish stunts, each meant to outdo the previous ones. It's like the battle for Middle Earth from LOTR3 on steroids, stretched out for an extra hour and drained of any real dialog, emotion, or character depth. One example: gigantic earth-eating worms are introduced before the big battle. I guess the orcs are happy about that, because maybe these worms like the orcs better than the men/dwarf/elf team? I'm not sure how or why, since they don't seem to have eyes. Anyway, the worms show up and dig up some dirt and the men/dwarf/elves are like OH NO! WORMS! and then... nothing. They don't appear again, and they serve no purpose. Did they create holes for the orcs to travel secretly? Did they kill anyone? It's never made clear. It's as if Peter Jackson expects us to just marvel at the sight, and be satisfied, as if we don't deserve logic or motivation. We walked out of the movie discussing how ridiculous it was that the whole third movie seemed to have very little with the book, and what a rip-off it was to stretch THE HOBBIT into so many hours of unnecessary, brainless and completely unbelievable fight scenes. In my opinion, this movie is good looking, and partially watchable, but then descends into an embarrassing, smelly, gigantic pile of troll droppings.