[Zigûr]

Well I got around to seeing it today. My basic thoughts could be summed up thusly:

First half? Not bad.
Second half? Not good.

I welcomed a somewhat greater focus on Bilbo and I thought that the scenes of tension under the Mountain were decent. I also liked Smaug's attack on Lake-town.

I was less impressed with the forced "drama" regarding Thranduil, Legolas and "Tauriel." Similarly, while it's completely realistic for Bard to be concerned for his film-children, they weren't hugely necessary. The ongoing Kíli romance was still unwelcome. I was also unimpressed by the deaths of Fíli and Kíli.

The White Council's arrival at Dol Guldur was all right, but I felt like Gandalf should have been more involved. Incidentally, I saw this with my father and he didn't realise that the "ghosts" they fought were meant to be the Nazgûl. I don't understand why they weren't cloaked or at least looked like their spectral forms from when Frodo is wearing the Ring in "Fellowship." Galadriel's confrontation with Sauron was arguably impressive but didn't really make sense. Sauron banging on about Angmar seemed off. I know in the book the Council believed that Sauron's ambition was to retake the North, but I'm fairly sure that wasn't actually his plan.

I also enjoyed the failed efforts at parley between the Men and Elves and the Dwarves. My biggest issue with all of this was the use of the Alfrid character, whose presence was completely unnecessary and in my opinion added nothing to the film besides an irritating distraction.

As for the battle itself I had two main issues. The first was that it was simply too long, and as others have stated focused too much on the individual acrobatics of certain heroic characters rather than the actual military conflict: there was no concern for the lot of the common soldier.

My other issue was that the orc armies were too bizarre. There were too many CGI trolls particularly, with different silly weapons. It looked like the filmmakers had gone the wrong way and taken their cues from the Harry Potter films. I don't mind the Olog-hai designs used in "The Return of the King" but I would actually have preferred if there weren't trolls at all. I thought it was more interesting and more confronting to just see human-sized soldiers fighting. Similarly, the orc soldiers came across as far too burly and formidable, yet very easily killed. Once again, it's odd that these armies were far more elite-looking than the armies of Mordor in "The Return of the King."

The events on Ravenhill and particularly the battles with Azog and Bolg were too long and I grew very weary with them. I did enjoy Bilbo's return to Bag End, but I felt like the film ended anticlimactically by segueing into "Fellowship" rather than featuring Gandalf and Balin's visit to Bag End.

Oh, one other thing: Dáin. Dáin's my favourite Dwarf, and what I like about his depiction in the Appendices is that he comes across as a Dwarf of greater wisdom and dignity than some of his kin. It's just a personal thing, but I felt it was a bit of a shame that they didn't take that angle here, because while Billy Connolly did in my opinion depict a Dwarf of honour and prowess, all the swearing and jokes missed a trick in portraying a Dwarf in a similar position to Thorin, but who has made different choices.

All in all a mixed bag. I felt like if it had built on what I saw as the relative strength of the first half it would have been a better film. That being said, I think a good deal of that is because I've become desensitized to a lot of the changes to the story.