Half film, Half Video Game

Rating: 4/10 (13 October 2019)

I enjoyed the filmic scenes set in the Shire and Rivendell in the first film along with the Gollum scene and a few others and mostly shrugged off the video game cut scenes. This film had less interesting locations and far more video game inspired scenes. I suspect I am a third of a century too old to be the target audience and while I am at times a gamer, I prefer my films to be films.
The poor casting and direction also seemed to show up more in this film. The dwarves were simply miscast and Legolas was the major casting / writing miscue on LotR essentially being a cartoon character. Here this is ramped up to 11. This is really a major problem in Jackson's work in general. He believes more is always better and is essentially a heavy metal director having little to no actual 'touch'. In LotR with better oversight, producers were on location and shooting scenes, and more Tolkien to guide him on a macho quest book this was less of a problem. In the gentler children's work with little guidance he is lost resorting to violence and sophomoric humor. There are occasions when the film works, but usually even these moments are stretched out to the point of boredom.
The ending is terrible. It feels like an unfinished film to make sure you see the last third of the money grab.