About as bad as one could expect.

Rating: 3/10 (17 September 2014)

I liked Lord of the Rings. The first two adaptations of The Hobbit are truly dreadful, however. The worst was Smaug, who instead of being a gigantic overawing threat became a cartoon character humbled by snowballs and unable to even injure one little dwarf in half a dozen approaches. That would have been enough to ruin the movie for me, but there was more, some of which other reviewers covered. It seems we must be subject to gymnastic special effects from creatures clearly incapable of them, video game death, and unimaginably odious "love" scenes in every movie or Jackson's world is not complete. I hope his day passes, soon, and with it this sort of film making.