A good movie, if you've never read the books.

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2013)

The movie varies so much from the books, when watching the film, and trying to picture where you are in the book (which I always find myself doing) you get so lost, until you realize that 90% of the movie is just made up.
Even for people who have only watched LOTR films, you wont be satisfied, as the hobbit has lost all sense of immense epicness which you get in LOTR.
I like the way the added the bit with the Necromancer and explaining how he got to power, and what he was doing during the time of the Hobbit, as this explains allot to the book readers. But the epicness of Gandalf was also lost during his fight scenes with the Orcs, the Orcs looked like cartoon characters from a Disney film, whilst Gandalf seemed to of developed arthritis and fought like a 90 year old with a walking stick, not a the bad ass Gandalf the Grey we know and love.
They skip the bits I was looking forward to so much, like meeting Beorn, and having to come in two at a time, like in the books, but they don't even talk to him properly. This was probably because they where being chased by Orcs throughout the WHOLE film, which is such bull s***t from the books. In the film you just get bored of orc fights, start anticipating them and soon enough dread another dull fight.
Peter Jackson has disappointed me as he has included absolute awful humor, in places like Laketown, which is first not in the book, and for a reason, but it is just aimed at such a young audience... I loved Martin Freemans humorous comments, but that's enough, just like the occasional comments from Gimili and Legolass in LOTR, they are funny, in small doses.
That brings me to the elves, they where great (apart from the fighting scenes, which had the same textures as a Nintendo Wii game) but elf's like Legolas' dad (Thranduil) where great, as they represented the true wood elf personality, shown in the books. The female elf Tauriel, after completely plucking her out of thin air (at least Legolass was alive during the Hobbit time), they decide to have her falling in love with a Dwarf... Yes Tolkien fans, she falls in love with a dwarf. At this point, all hope of redemption had well and truly gone.
Smaug was good, but they dragged his scene on for far too long, and mocking him seem thick, with the dwarfs running around him.
Last of all is character bonding, which in LOTR films was great, shown almost as well as the books, but so far in the hobbit films, it may as well be non existent. The only Dwarve I really liked was Balin, and you could see Balin and Bilbo bond, but that was about it.
If you're looking for a fight filled (however good they are) film, and you haven't read the book (so you wont find yourself correcting and being confused at the majority of the film) then you will probably enjoy it. I understand that things have to change in films, but I wish Peter just kept to this LOTR film ways, keeping epicnes, a tad of comedy and only removing minimal from the books, and of course not adding loads of crap.
I did enjoy it at parts, but mostly disappointed, even more than I was with the first Hobbit film.
(sorry for lots of typos, couldn't be bothered to go through the whole thing!)