Terrible

Rating: 1/10 (14 December 2013)

I loved the LOTR movies despite the liberties Jackson took with the story (especially in The Two Towers) and I found the first Hobbit movie tolerable but this one stinks. Jackson seems to think that we like his story-making over Tolkien's. He has used his gratuitously added action scenes from those movies as the basis for almost the entirety of this 3+hour movie.
There is maybe 15 minutes of this movie that is from the book. The rest is stuff that Jackson wrote and never-ending CGI action shots that have such fast moving elements that you can barely tell what is going on and the characters perform feats that stretch belief so far that even the fantasy-world of Middle Earth cannot overcome. The character of Bilbo is diminished almost to a supporting one. The main characters of this movie are Tauriel and Legolas (the former made up by Jackson, the latter never appears in The Hobbit) and Bard. The character of Bard is totally changed from the noble protector of Lake-town to that of a ruffian on the margins of Lake-town society. The dwarfs were portrayed in the book as being a little cowardly, very greedy and bumbling. In the movie they are like a pack of Jackie Chan's with beards, even taunting the dragon to chase them through the halls of Erebor to try to catch him in a trap. From a cinematic critique Jackson continues his habit of massively exaggerating the scenery vertically so that as the party is making there way up the side of the Lonely Mountain it seems like they are climbing the Matterhorn.
I could go on and on. Bottom line is this movie is lousy. I have watched each of the LOTR movies several times; I don't think I could sit through this movie for a second time.