What happened??????

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2014)

I absolutely LOVE the Lord of the Rings movies and up until now I thought Peter Jackson was a very good director. At least he was in the Lord of the Rings. In this movie, I don't know what happened to Peter Jackson's directing skills. This movie should be inspired by Tolkien's book instead of based on it. The movie follows the book's timeline pretty well, until they get captured by the elves, then it all kind of starts to fall apart. I love Legolas and I was really excited when I heard he was going to be in The Hobbit, but I thought he was just going to make an appearance in Mirkwood and then be done. I did not know they were going to add the stupid female elf and make her fall in love with Kili which is totally not in keeping with Tolkien's world. They spent way too much time with Laketown's made up political problems and such. They made Bard more like an untrustworthy criminal and then when they leave Laketown they leave Kili, Fili and two others behind! Then, when they reach the mountain, the moonlight is the last light of Durin's Day instead of the sunlight. I will say well done on the dragon. He was pretty awesome. The dragon sequence was good until the rest of the dwarfs came in and started playing "Ha ha! You can't catch me!" games with the dragon. I was so confused during the entire time they were fighting the dragon. For one thing, the dwarfs aren't even supposed to be in there, and then they're building all this stuff to try and trap him in gold??? I will close with saying that the part where Tauriel heals Kili was kind of where I lost hope with the film. It was just so not in keeping with the book. However, I loved it when Legolas was on screen because he's gorgeous, though I still wish he would have just made an appearance. All in all, I'll say good movie unless you've read the book.