An improvement on the first film and a fantastic film in the LoTR franchise

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2014)

I know the first Hobbit film has its criticisms but I did really enjoy it and think it was great but this film improves on that film and is even better. This film picks up where the last one with Thoran, Bilbo and the rest of the dwarfs getting closer to Erebor and the dragon Smaug's lair while Gandalf has to go on his own quest to deal with a new threat involving the Necromancer. First of all the main characters, Martin Freeman as Bilbo is a superb choice and his performance in this one is better than the last as you can see how events in the last movie have affected him and changed the character for this film. The rest of the characters are great too Thoran Oakenshield feels much more driven in this film and more of an awesome leader then he was in the first film. Once again Ian Mckellen is superb as Gandalf the grey even though I have some problems with what they do with him but he was great. The additions of Evangeline Lilly's character and Legolas were great and the action they introduced was a great change to just the dwarfs and added a new dimension to the film. But the show stealer 100 percent is the dragon Smaug. The use of CGI and the look of him is superb and Benedict Cumberbatch's voice to it is eary, evil and superb. If you don't like anything in this film you will love Smaug. Now a problem I have with this film is it's story, for the majority of this film the story is mostly the same as the first film. Also there is the second plot with Gandalf that is pretty interesting but it gets less screen time then it deserves and we do not see Gandalf's journey enough to be interested. But the pay off to the journey is massive and throughout there is some decent storytelling. The script is really good with all the delivery of lines great and the way the interactions happen are very interesting. The style is obviously superb with the middle earth history being superb especially with the addition of Smaug. This is not as good as any of the original trilogy but It is fantastic and definitely worth seeing.