I want to love it so bad.

Rating: 5/10 (11 December 2013)

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS, BEWARE*
This movie is, like, i don't even know. I can't decide whether i enjoyed it or not. The amount of special effects is so incredibly high I was having a hard time figuring out whether it's an animated movie or not. Of course they are great, probably the best special effects in a movie since Avatar, but still everything just looks so wrong, way to much. Examples of that could be the Murkwood, where every single tree, bug or shroom would look completely fake. This could work in some movies or genres, like Sci-fi, but here, where the LOTR-trilogy showed such a great example of what you can accomplish with the New Zealand nature, it doesn't work for me. Other examples could be the melting of the golden statue, which just looked weird and completely impossible, or the fight Gandalf had with Sauron where Gandalf would forge new magical barriers over and over again, making the scene look kinda sloppy. The fact that they've also started animating the orchs instead of using actual people with costumes play them takes away much of what's so great with the fighting scenes and dialogs.
Aaand there's more. How could it even be possible to create three 2½ hour long movies based on a book containing roughly 300 pages?! In my opinion it's not possible, and The Hobbit is my proof. This movie contain so many dull lines, so many scenes that would have been fine if they would have been kept fast-paced. Instead we're having parts and dialogs being prolonged to the point of them starting to lose track of subject. Unnecessary scenes the movie would do perfect without, and even unnecessary characters! I mean, who is Tauriel and what role in the movie is she supposed to fulfill? It all starts with the elf's rescuing the dwarfs from the spiders in Murkwood, until they eventually capture them. Now, at this point, we're able to find out that Tauriel is a somewhat highly stationed officer amongst the elf's, with a crush on Legolas. Legolas also seems very fond of Tauriel, which obviously makes you believe that they will become a couple eventually. But then, all of a sudden, she falls in love with Kili after a very emotional conversation between the two about Kili's mother. At this point i was confused as f**k since it didn't really make any sense, their love for each other didn't continue anymore than the scene of her healing his wound later on, but that's it. All she really does is having a switch of love from Legolas to Kili and slaying a few orchs. (Her fighting scenes are pretty awesome though). There doesn't seem to be any real thought behind it.
If you're still reading this review, good, because now I'm done "hating". Truth to be told, i enjoyed this movie more than the first one. The action-scenes i felt that Hobbit: An unexpected journey lacked were brought out now, making the movie a whole lot more exciting. The appearance of Smaug and especially the voice-over from Benedict Cumberbatch really lifted the plot and also, Gandalfs side-quest made the tale a lot more interesting, which was needed since it would never have worked if we were to only follow the 13 dwarfs.
But to be honest, i walked in to that theater expecting a disappointment. Being bummed out from the previous movie, which i really did not like, i wasn't expecting much at all. But luckily for me it came out better than expected, and hopefully some of those confusing characters and scenes will be explained in the third and final movie.