an elaboration
If the amount of time and care went into this movie as went into Lord of the Rings, I think I would have appreciated it so much more. Everything felt rushed - from the shots to the dialogue to the action scenes. With the resources that have clearly been demonstrated with LotR, why the smurf were so many of the action scenes so poorly animated? Unacceptable.

As the movies go on, I am having a bit of trouble feeling Martin Freeman for Bilbo. I love Martin Freeman - I absolutely adore him. I think his little ticks, his furrowed brows and concerned facial expressions are so absolutely wonderful and he brings a sort of "real" feeling to the character in that he behaves in ways and has these characteristics that we all do and he doesn't appear to be perfectly, flawlessly acting. He just flows as an actor and convinces you of his part. And he's so smurfing lovable and handsome as trout, and therein lies the problem. I've always thought of Bilbo as a sort of almost borderline annoying grumpy mid-life hobbit who becomes irritated at the slightest upset in his life and becomes annoyed easily. The whole point of this journey is to change him into an adventure-seeking soul, and the more I watch Martin Freeman, the more I don't think I see that change happening because he already reflects the adventure-seeking so well already. I guess I'm still stuck on Ian Holm because he perfectly encapsulates the grumpy leave me alone well-to-do sort of hobbit that Bilbo is in my mind. But he does wonderfully in his role and that's all I can ask for, because I have no complaints whatsoever of seeing him onscreen.

I wish the scene with Beorn had been a little longer. Going back to my original complaint, it felt rushed.

The bit with Gandalf visiting the ruins and the Necromancer were okay. I did like seeing Gandalf more involved in the journey and this film than I originally thought I would. I greatly dislike Radaghast and was relieved that he was only on screen for a few minutes.

I still hate the fact that the orcs and Azog have been involved up to this point.

Legolas was atrocious and I loathed him. It's all fine and great to want to include the fact that he was very exclusive and racist as part of the Woodland Elves, but I wish it didn't mean that he had to act like a stupid emo bitch. Legolas was so great in Lord of the Rings because of how mysterious he was and how little he spoke, yet how filled with wisdom he always seemed to be. It could have been possible for those same elements to be applied to his character in this time while steering him toward racism of the hobbits and general protectiveness of the elves and servitude of his father. Instead, he just seemed to be glaring at everyone the entire time. Just glaring like a stupid emo bitch, and I wanted to slap him. Additionally, in Laketown when he and Azog faced off, it made no sense to me for his character to go for swords and to enter into an actual fight with him. I don't feel like Legolas would ever do that - he's too smart to be deluded by the pride of winning a sword battle when he clearly has the capacity to stick an arrow into Azog's eye within a second. That is something that a man would fall for. Instead, he made a poor decision of picking up a sword for seemingly no other reason than honor, and it all felt completely out of character to me. If Jackson didn't want to give Legolas an opportunity to kill Azog so he could be included into the next film and such, he should have just forgone that entire scene, because it was completely senseless.

I already mentioned the bit about the river and barrels scene with Legolas hopping on heads in my first post and how outraged I was. I just don't understand why anyone thought that would be a good idea. Why was it a good idea for Bombur to go rolling down next to the rapids taking out orcs left and right, and then his barrel flying across the river and then allowing it to do the same thing on the other side? The whole thing was just so, so stupid. I don't get why Peter Jackson feels the need to pull these stupid smurfing gimmicks. Is it because the viewers legitimately love them? I was so disappointed with that scene.

Right after the river barrel scene, I lost all hope. I thought there was no smurfing way that this movie could be salvaged and that it was over. I was so pleasantly surprised with Bard. He was wonderful. His entire story, from being hesitant to help the dwarves at first, to smuggling them in and caring for them and attempting to help them and standing up for his own ideals as soon as he found out what they were up to was marvelous. I was so happy to see him deny the dwarves instead of just going along with what they wanted because they paid him. Additionally, I found myself so curious about his reaction to hearing Thorin's name and rushing to find the tapestries. I couldn't figure out if he was pleased or horrified, and was legitimately on edge to find out what his reaction was going to be. As Psychotic said, I, too, loved that the town politics were focused on, and that he threw himself in the middle of it. I loved his sense of justice and the fact that he stood up to the rest of the town in the face of their greed to try to convey the consequences of helping the dwarves. How such a perfectly flawless character can be written among a pile of trash is beyond me. Bard is what Legolas should have been.

Smaug was the crown jewel. This scene has always been my favorite in the book. I love the riddles that Bilbo and Smaug toss back and forth at eachother, both sortof playing with and amusing eachother. I love the banter between the two of them, I love the fact that Bilbo manages to keep his cool in light of the fact that he is conversing with a beast who can turn him into ash in a second. I love the fact that Smaug is so curious about Bilbo - probably his first interaction with another being in a long time - and is so chuffed about being in control about the situation that he simply allows it to continue for his amusement. I was absolutely amazed at the Smaug that I was staring at onscreen, and being smitten with BC only adds to the fact that Smaug was a total and complete badass. His visual representation was absolutely beautiful, and he couldn't have looked more like how I pictured him in my head when I read the book for the very first time. It was wonderful.

Tauriel. Tauriel was an obscenity. The fact that Peter Jackson feels it is within his own right to tarnish the work of Tolkien like he has with so much of the crap in this movie and then to add his own character in because he is so utterly obsessed with Middle Earth that he has a compulsion to make himself a part of it in someway is... pathetic. There was such a clear difference in Tauriel's character from the rest of the characters, even with all of the changes made and she just did not belong there. At all. Her lines were over-rehearsed, over-acted, unnatural. There was absolutely no need, no point whatsoever in having her a part of the story. It made no sense, and was only there to please the masses with a lovestory. And the worst crime of all is that it was a troutty smurfing lovestory at that, and is thus unforgivable.

My biggest complaint in this movie is that I feel no emotional connection to anything or anyone. I don't feel an emotional connection to Bilbo, nor to Thorin, nor to any of the dwarves. Only at one time did I feel the slightest inkling of it, and that was when Bard was rushing to stop the town from aiding the dwarves because he didn't want anything to happen to his children. Aside from that, all I felt like I was doing was spectating. I didn't feel involved, I didn't feel encompassed by the story, I didn't feel anything tug at my heartstrings. As the biggest bleeding heart on this forum, if I can sit through a three hour film and not feel anything for it, there is something wrong with it.

I'm sick of Peter Jackson. I'm sick of seeing him muddle his hands in Middle Earth and becoming so obsessed with it that he just absolutely destroys it. He is a smurfing obsessive geek who has too much power in his hands with these rights to the stories and he needs to just sit down and shut up about Tolkien for the rest of his life because he has taken too many outrageous liberties with it so far. He nailed Lord of the Rings as well as he could - I think that very little feasible improvements could have been made to those films under his direction, but they turned out okay. These Hobbit films are something else. Should have quit while he was ahead.

There were a lot of other little complaints I had (like about the dwarves all rushing in to try and outsmart Smaug and thinking it was a good idea to cover him in gold - why, exactly?) but I'll just leave it at that. Oh, but I do feel like it ended on a terrible note. There was no transition into the end and no real purpose for them to stop it where they did. Again, felt rushed, like they had no time to properly plan a good stopping point.

I give this movie a 4/10. 3 points to Smaug and 1 point to Bard.