Made by the Wachowski brothers?

Rating: 1/10 (2 January 2014)

Welcome to the The Matrix Reloaded against the backdrop of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Or perhaps this movie was written and directed by George Lucas, post the original Star Wars trilogy. Though, to be fair, none of the characters is even close to being as annoyingly stupid as Jar-Jar.
What this movie is, is a generally mindless bunch of action scenes held together tenuously by snippets of The Hobbit. As with The Matrix Reloaded (and Revolutions), the action very quickly becomes dull as the scenes are drawn out to ridiculous lengths and serve no purpose other than to draw out what is actually probably about 40 minutes of story. They serve to demonstrate that Jackson is no John Woo when it comes to action sequences. And, like Lucas with Star Wars, shouldn't have been allowed to touch this story after his success with The Lord of the Rings.
Benedict Cumberbatch does do a great job as Smaug's voice, but that's pretty much the only part of the movie worth watching.
It's unfortunate that Jackson has been allowed to destroy this great story.