Excellent action and story. Lovers of the original, prepare to be surprised.

Rating: 7/10 (8 September 2014)

I liked the first movie of the trilogy better than this one, but the second film surpassed the first one in some areas. The trilogy so far has raised some controversy as to its differences to the original story. I like the book as well as the two movies, and I am looking forward to the third one. Personally, I don't really prefer one over the other, but before I get too much further into my review, I want to just give a couple of other points of view on the matter. Firstly, that the movie company's primary job is to make money, sad as that may be. Therefore, its best marketing tool is to attract fans that aren't necessarily fans of the book. To be perfectly honest, Tolkien's literary style and story structure doesn't fully appeal to modern audiences, so the filmmakers modernized it slightly. Secondly, the filmmakers have a difficult task in making three movies out of one book. This requires them to add a few action scenes to keep the plot going. Thirdly, they might have wanted to put a slightly different take on the story. After all, the old Bilbo says at the beginning of the first movie that he did not tell Frodo everything. Perhaps the added bits are things that the secrets that Bilbo wanted to hide for whatever reason. Now onto the real review, for anyone who I haven't lost already. For me, this movie is tied for the best display of CGI with Avatar. Smaug is absolutely spectacular and the choreography of the elves fighting is beautiful. Honestly, watching Legolas take out orcs along the forest river was some of the best action I have seen in any movie. I was slightly let down by the score of Howard Shore since I've come to love his triumphant scores from the other four middle earth films. I don't really blame him in this case, though, because a triumphant film score wouldn't really fit the mood here. Some of the music is still good though. Moving on to the story, I do agree that there were a few points that were lacking. The introduction of Beorn was not executed as well as it could have been. I felt like they made him a little to dangerous, when he is really a pretty nice guy in the story. I thought the master of Lake Town got a slightly inflated role, but maybe it's setting something up for the third movie. My biggest problem in terms of deviation from the story is the reduced importance of the spider battle. It works out fine with the transition into capture by the elves and the action is good, but I felt like that was a very pivotal point for Bilbo's leadership role among the company in the book. The elves saving the dwarfs rather than Bilbo kind of reduces the respect that they owe him. I know that the added character of Tauriel is another point of controversy. I thought it was a little unnecessary for four dwarfs to remain in Lake Town just to compensate for her role, although the battle there is pretty good. It also opens up room for more error in getting Fili, Kili, Oin, and Bofur joining the others later. I'm guessing Fili is going to have to choose between Tauriel and the company and it's going to break everybody's heart when they die side by side in the climatic battle (that's all just a guess by the way). That's the end of the low points. On the upside, I liked how Gandalf's lost adventure was finally told. Some people might say that it was just to make the film longer, but I had been very curious as to what happened there. It seemed a little dumb in the story for Gandalf to just leave the company without a good explanation. The early introduction of Bard was okay with me because it might have been a little odd for him to just show up in the third one and (SPOILER ALERT) kill Smaug. He's a pretty good character besides and gives a good argument against the greedy persuasion of Thorin. This greed makes Thorin a good subtle antagonist later on. He quite blatantly uses Bilbo to do something he knows he can't bring himself to do. The courage Bilbo shows in his encounter with Smaug is very inspiring and impressive, though not as dramatic as his heroism in the first film. The fact that he is even able to look at Smaug shows a pretty fair amount of courage. An unexpected surprise for me was the dragon chase scenes at the end. The nine dwarfs and Bilbo make a pretty solid effort to kill Smaug. Another thing that caught me by surprise was the majesty of Erebor. I had always kind of imagined it as a series of dull caves within the mountain, neglecting the fact that it used to be a grand city. The treasure room of Thrain is also quite breathtaking. My last surprise was the sudden ending. I had anticipated the movie to end with the death of Smaug by Bard so I was slightly shocked by the cliff-hanger ending. In conclusion, I give it 8.8/10 and recommend it to people who like fantasy action and a tense story (in the sense of the duplicity between the dwarfs, Thranduil, and the Lake Men which will no doubt come to a head in the final film). To avid fans of the book, I would say, try to have an open mind to the added stuff and remember that you can always watch the 1970's cartoon version.