I will start off with what I liked about the movie. Watching these movies I do feel like I am in the world of Tolkien. The sets and environments are beautiful. The acting is also good. In this movie Thorin's character gets more development as he become more greedy. Gandalf is bad ass as always, but he does not appear that much in this movie. Bilbo Baggins is great. He is my favorite character in these movies because I have always seen a bit of myself in him. I think any person that was thrown into Bilbo's position would have the same reactions and character evolution. A lot of the fight scenes are awesome too. The fight when the group is fighting the orcs down the river is the best because they do a lot of creative sequences.
Smaug is the best part of the movie. He is the most bad ass dragon in not just movie, but fantasy history as well. They captured his character perfectly. I need to give credit to the animation department. The details on Smaug are wonderful and they made him appear arrogant, old, and fierce. He also moves like how a ginormous dragon would move. It must have been a nightmare to animate him. Smaug's voice is like a threatening version of Mufassa's voice from The Lion King. It is intimidating. The interaction between him an Bilbo was the high light of the movie.
Now I will go into what I hated about the movie. Three major things damaged this movie. The first is Tauriel. She has no reason to exist. I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to put her in this story. Did feminists demand a female character? In this movie Tauriel's story is that she falls in love with Kili the dwarf, but Legolas also has a crush on her. That means they added an unnecessary love story that just wastes time and makes the movie longer than it needs to be. What makes it worse is that it is a love-triangle. Love-triangles NEVER work! Who thought of that stupid idea? I understand putting Legolas in the movie, but Tauriel was a terrible idea. Also if you have read the book and know that Tauriel was created for the film franchise then it is obvious what will happen to her in the next movie.
Secondly, the pacing gets too slow in the last act of the movie. The movie has Bilbo and the dwarves running away from Smaug for like half-an-hour. It lost all of its excitement. Other scenes could have been shorter or cut entirely.
Before I go on to what I hated about the movie the most I will warn you that this section contains spoilers because I will talk about the ending to the movie. So you should skip this next paragraph if you do not want to be spoiled.
I hated where the movie left off. It should have ended after Bard kills Smaug. The title of the movie is called, The Hobbit: The DESOLATION of Smaug, but there is NO desolation of Smaug. This movie should have been called, The Hobbit: Before The Desolation of Smaug or The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Will Take Place in the Next Film. The film ends with Smaug heading to Esgaroth. If they had cut out all that crap of Tauriel and shortened some scenes we would have had gotten to the part where Bard kills Smaug. I had the same problem in the last movie too. All the scenes that were created to connect The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings should have been left out and put in the extended addition. Tolkien himself once tried to connect The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, but realized he could not because The Hobbit was not supposed to be connected to The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is supposed to be a children's fairy tale. In the beginning of the movie Bilbo already showed signs of being obsessed with the ring, even though he does not in the book.
Overall this movie just confirmed to me that the reason they stretched the movie series into a trilogy was to make more money. The story suffers for it. The movie itself is okay. If they had cut out Tauriel and shorten some scenes, this movie could have been good. It could have ended with an action packed scene. However, those blunders almost ruined the movie for me. The last film in this trilogy will be purely action. Maybe it will make up for this.
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