Jackson and Boyens did badly this time around

Rating: Null/10 (26 January 2014)

Boyens - She wrote a movie that isn't even close to the plot of the book, and the changes were not for the better. Part of it is not her fault: she was probably told about 80% of the way through that they would change it from two movies to three. You could tell the scenes in the Mountain were blatantly added as time filler. It was seriously almost 30 minutes of Smaug chasing the Dwarfs around, and don't get me started with that illogical exploding gold statue they made. Christ, that was cringeworthy. And the Kili-Tauriel-Legolas love triangle was vomit inducing.
Jackson - I think he is getting too cute with his action sequences. Every kill now is some elaborate CGI-fest. When done in moderation (like the beheading of Lurtz in FOTR), it's cool. Now every orc is killed with some crazy throat-chop beheading. As a result, every "good" character now seems like an invincible killing machine, even the dwarfs who in the first movie were noted as being "merchants, minors, toymakers...not exactly the stuff of legend". The way Jackson portrays them, Legolas, Thorin, and the other 12 dwarfs could destroy all the armies of Mordor by themselves. One of these "toymakers who isn't the stuff of legend" gets turned into a barrel-tank at one point and goes two handed with some axes and slaughters about a dozen orcs in two seconds on a river bank...And then his fat ass manages to jump 10 feet across a raging river, timing his jump so that he could land perfectly inside a barrel that was about a half-inch wider than he was.
I can forgive a lot of things but I was legitimately disappointed in this movie and thought the first Hobbit was much better.