When everything is epic, nothing is epic.

Rating: 4/10 (10 December 2016)

The fundamental task of storytelling is to take the audience on an emotional journey that works its way up to a final, epic climax. The Desolation of Smaug fails to accomplish this very basic task by bombarding viewers with a constant sequence of epic struggles from the outset, leaving itself no room to increase the level of emotion and intensity into a final climax. After watching nearly three hours of epic battles between numerous combinations of orcs, dwarfs, hobbits, elves, spiders, humans, werewolves, wizards, and dragons I found the final "climax" to be dull and tiresome, having nothing more to offer. When everything is epic, nothing is epic. I spent the final half hour growling "End Already!!!" constantly because the movie had gone flat, boring, and quite frankly irritating.
It's unfortunate that so much effort went into making a movie that fails simply because the creators lost their understanding of basic storytelling in their obsession with epicness.