The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

I understand very well that you can't give in-depth screentime to all the 13 dwarves, but it would have taken so little to make us care even a bit, or show that somebody else within the story cared.

The thing is though, they've had three films to develop the Dwarves and have utterly failed to do so. Most of them have few or no lines, and only Thorin, Balin and Kíli have any substantial characterisation. Instead we've been given characters who weren't in the book, like Legolas and "Tauriel" as well as endless cutaways to Azog, Radagast and the like.

Of course the Dwarves other than Thorin really aren't developed in the book - even Balin is mostly just a cheery old lookout man overall - but that didn't matter because we were focused on Bilbo. In the film, however, they're trying to expand everything, and went to all this effort to given the Dwarves unique designs (and even invent backstories for them) which all amount to absolutely nothing. Why bother? Marketing, I suppose, but that's no excuse. I'd rather have characterisation over thirteen increasingly silly haircuts.