Heinous in all areas

Rating: 2/10 (12 February 2016)

Many call this the best Hobbit. I don't see why - it is one of the downright worst films I've ever seen.
Middle Earth is completely saturated in CGI which nearly always kills the sense of wonder that Andrew Lesnie's cinematography could create with New Zealand's natural setting. Motion capture is necessary in for creatures like Smaug and Gollum, but the decision to use it for Orcs is downright terrible because as a result none of the creatures look real. It looks like big noodles of CGI flailing around and interacting. Worse, none of the film's action has any tension because everyone slays their opponent outside of perhaps one sword clash. If you watch the best fight scenes in LOTR, they usually involve challenge, like Aragorn racing to Boromir's aid only to be slowed by random Uruk-hai warriors. Here, every character - dwarf or elf or even Bilbo - kills any person in their path. The only actual action sequences involve Legolas (who we know survives and therefore provides no tension).
I'll mention some positive elements because they do exist. Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Lee Pace (Thranduil) and Luke Evans (Bard) all provide excellent performances. Freeman is clearly trying the hardest of everyone and has some wonderful moments especially whilst interacting with Smaug. The traumatised look on his face when climbing out of Bard's toilet makes the whole scene. Pace could easily be the thousand-year old King Thranduil (despite being two years younger than his on-screen son), and delivers the film's lines with almost Shakespearen grace. Evans is giving a passionate performance, and its a shame he's never allowed to interact with anyone else with talent. The visual creation of Smaug was everything I could ever hope, voiced flawlessly by Benedict Cumberbatch, and there are still some wonderful moments of cinematography.
But that's where it ends.
Ryan Gage's Alfrid is a cancer on the Middle Earth franchise. He contributes nothing but unnecessary conflict to pad the movie into a trilogy. Orlando Bloom is cashing in his whole performance and providing absolutely nothing to the story but inane action sequences. Even the great Ian McKellen is overacting (he does this thing with his mouth after he speaks) and that's truly sad. Ironically, Sir Anthony Sher probably gives the best performance of all the dwarfs and his scenes exist only in the Extended Edition.
The screenplay is disgusting, full of quarter-baked story lines (ahem, Tauriel-Kili), undeveloped characters (Legolas), and truly heinous dialogue ("I told him to go ishkh khakfe andu null!", "I could have anything down my trousers"). Characters make stupid declarations about danger that we know won't come true but are included to pad the run time. Azog continues to be an underdeveloped villain - especially with the introduction of Bolg - and his purpose is only to harass Gandalf (again, a character we know will live through the film).
The film's big set pieces are both enormously undercut by different elements. The barrel ride is ruined by the Legolas jumping on Orc heads and also by the forced romance - Tauriel is so undeveloped with Kili that its almost distracting how much she appears to care. The "morgul shaft" is a gimmick included for no other reason than to further a barely functioning love story - the orc's taunting of Tauriel makes no sense without the context that he isn't aware of. The big fight scene with Smaug is undercut by logical implausibilities (riding on molten gold) and the fact that the film ends so abruptly and unnecessarily. Couldn't they have just taken the death of Smaug from the start of the third Hobbit and ended the film on that?
I could go on for hours about how terrible this film is, but I'll just finish with two things that bother me. First, Azog just walks in and talks to Sauron. Orcs don't walk in and talk to Sauron. Gothmog talked to the Witch-King and he was the general in charge of 200,000 orcs sacking Minas Tirith. Azog is just some big orc. It is like a big storm trooper talking to the Emperor.
Secondly, there's too much CGI gold. If the dwarfs literally liberated that gold and brought it back into the economy it would have no value whatsoever. If you physically make Minas Tirith and everything in it out of gold, then there's no point in buying anything! I feel that the CGI department should have just calmed right down. Some have accused me of nitpicking, but honestly either this is a pressing issue or the movie is so boring that it gave me nothing else to think about.