Losing its shine.

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2014)

You should never go to the cinema because you feel duty bound to see something rather than because you are really excited but that's how I felt about this one. I knew I was going to see a middle section of a story and following from the first Part of The Hobbit I knew it would be visually interesting but probably arse-achingly long.
I was right about the length but the visual appeal is waning. I really liked LOTR and the visuals were stunning but we are used to that style now so the other elements of the film have to be much stronger. With this one they really stretched the story. I didn't appreciate the changes that meant that there were orcs everywhere along the journey. This simply lead to overlong, over-choreographed fight scenes where I felt I was watching a computer game.
The huge scenes in the mountain with dragon fire and falling buildings became tedious. Dwarfs were being thrown all over the place and not one was even slightly injured. Not even dwarfs would believe that covering a fire breathing dragon in molten gold would be of any use. The whole piece about molding a giant dwarvish statue was just silly.
Yes I will slavishly be back for part 3 because these movies need to be seen on the big screen but again it will be a sense of duty (with a huge dollop of hopefulness) not pure desire that drives me to buy a ticket.