Astonishing, beautiful & full of cleverness

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2013)

Well I just came back from a screening and I still have goosebumps. The movie just blew my expectations!
I followed the development of the movies very closely as I'm a big fan of the book and the LOTR trilogy. In the trailers I saw Legolas in 'what looked like' Laketown, orks attacking elves, gandalf in Dol Guldur... I was wondering, how will this all fit. How will Peter and his crew make this work, since those things don't happen in the book. I must say, they did it perfectly. The story and the twists are so good. They link everything well to each other and all makes sense.
The pacing of the first half of the movie is very fast and the beauty of every single image is astonishing. You should definitely watch it in 3D HFR. The cinematography was perfect! There's just so much happening with the dwarfs and other creatures.
The pacing of the second half of the movie is a bit slower but there are tons of 'WOW' or 'DID THAT JUST HAPPEN' moments. In this half the film deviates a lot from the book, but as a big fan of the book, I didn't mind at all. The changes all make sense and it made the film even better.
The ending of the film is, in my opinion, perfect! I didn't expect it, but without giving it away, I think they made a good decision to end the second film at that certain point. It'll be good for the beginning of the third. It'll surely start with a bang!
There's only one thing I wanted to see more of in this film, and that's Beorn. His appearance was too brief for such a wonderful character.
My god, this film is soooo awesome! Go see it already!!!