An insult to Tolkien fans, and sentient beings...

Rating: 1/10 (13 December 2013)

I am a big Fan of Tolkien's work. While Peter Jackson's "adaptations" have all disappointed me, I still owned them all. I am willing to allow for necessary changes to translate a story onto the big screen, when done tastefully. However, as Peter Jackson's success feeds his ego, we see less and less of anything tasteful in his work.
For fans of The Professor and his work, the sad state of this movie can be summed up easily: were you to remove Tolkien's character and place names from this movie, they could have bygone purchasing the movie rights and still avoided copyright infringement lawsuits.
While there are a few scenes very roughly based upon the book (i.e. there are barrels, and there is a dragon), none of these scenes plays out in such a way that I personally would have recognized as being based on The Hobbit. The Sword of Shannara actually bears a greater resemblance to Tolkien's work than this movie which abuses the name and idea of middle earth.
For other sentient beings, you need know only that this movie has stunning visuals, a little eye-candy for the ladies, and little else going for it.
Peter Jackson either has no attention-span of his own, or he expects none from his viewers. If I ever actually watch this movie again, I will literally use a stop watch to see if I can ever reach one minute without some ridiculous, artificial, played-up conflict, superficially added to the plot for no reason beyond immediate suspense for its own sake. In other words, cheap manipulation of the audience. All else, including internal consistency, is sacrificed to this false god.
While the movie's predecessor bent the laws of physics, The Desolation of Smaug ignores or destroys them. Parts of the movie bear so little scrutiny that they transport you out of the scene (if you were actually engaged in it before) and into an epic face-palm.
The action is over-the-top, as is PJ's usual. The real problem with Jackson's action scenes is that nobody can really worry about the safety of the characters; every one of them is portrayed as a Last Action Hero that Schwarzenegger himself would be proud of.
I knew that I would be disappointed going into this movie. My expectations were very low. As low as my expectations were, I still left so angry that I couldn't sleep.
All I can say now to Peter Jackson now is: NO! No, no, no! Keep your hands off both Tolkien and movies.