Damn! I should have read this review before I took a 10 year old child to see this, who totally loved all three movies. She also read the book.
First let's clear the air a bit. The Hobbit is 303 pages long. The three movies are split fairly evenly in thirds of the book chapter wise, not page wise. The third movie covers seven chapters out of nineteen.
A lot of good and bad stuff added in. A lot of good and boring stuff taken out. Darker. Everything is darker it seems these days (except maybe the Night at the Museum series, which isn't saying much.)
What is with the Damn Spice Worms and where the Hell is Atreides?
I'm a true fan, having first read these stories at around 10 myself.
The sound was so bad in this movie, I couldn't hear most of the conversations. I'm very hearing challenged, but had my aid in. I never have a problem hearing movies in a theater, with or without an aid. Well until now.
The HFR gave me motion sickness headaches.
Loved Thranduil's mount!
Strange scene with the dragon slaying. It was ok, I guess.
With all that he did, would it have killed him to have put the final scene from the book in?
One review I read was done by an infidel. Who would have picked on a scene with a Hobbit picking up stones and slaying orcs with perfect aim? Only one who didn't know much about Hobbits.
As disappointing as TLOTR was, but I still enjoyed some of it, as I did TLOTR. This last one needs a bit more time in the edit room to remove a bunch of stupid, wasteful scenes. Almost as disappointing as when he killed Saruman off at Orthanc. WHAT!? No Scouring of the Shire?!! Sacrilege.
This will eventually make a fairly decent 45 minute movie.