Saw it.
Forgetting all the book stuff, just looking at it purely on it's own as a movie, I thought it was just ok. It felt too much like a fluffy action flick, with not enough depth.
I thought the only poignant moment came from Thorin's reaction when he was all, "I know these walls" and finally entered Erebor.
Even though the pacing was much faster in this movie, I still thought it was way too god damn long. So many sequences just went on forever or felt totally unnecessary. I actually thought the barrel scene was kind of fun and I don't mind that kind of raucous action fun. I just felt like that's pretty much what the whole movie was, just Peter Jackson doing as many tricks as possible.
With the exception of the weird ass sequence where the dwarves were running around with Smaug chasing them, I loved everything with Smaug. Smaug and Bilbo were wonderful. But Thorin riding down a river of molton gold? Pretty dumb.
I love Legolas. I had a poster of him up in my bedroom wall through high school. But he was in this movie way too damn much. I also didn't think it made sense how serious and angry Legolas was, given how bright eyed and young he was in Fellowship. I mean, I know you can't help that Orlando Bloom has aged, but I didn't get any kind of sense that he was younger than the Legolas we saw in LotR. Tauriel wasn't as horrible as I had anticipated, but the stuff with Kili, good lord. Ughghghg.
I was impressed with Bard and thought he had a great presence and liked that his role was expanded, but the Lake Town stuff was just weird with how there were orcs everywhere and no one noticed. That really bothered me. The Sauron/Gandalf thing wasn't done as well as I had hoped, but a lot of that has to do with how crappy the orcs are as villains. What was so wrong with having physical real life actors play orcs rather than the CGI crap? For some reason, the CGI looks way worse than it did 10+ years ago with the LotR. And just visually, it's nowhere near as beautiful as I had hoped. I think a part of it is how this was all shot on digital rather than film. Just didn't have that magical quality to the imagery. The music by Howard Shore was also surprisingly lackluster.
Now that's just movie stuff. Going back to the movie as an adaptation... well, it was pretty god damn awful. It only vaguely follows the basic plot points, but going beyond all that, it doesn't stay true to the feel and spirit of the books at all. That makes me so sad.
It was an ok movie. Pretty entertaining in parts. Pretty crappy in others. I hope one day they re-do these movies and make them a true children's classic like it deserves to be.