I'll start by saying that I really liked Unexpected Journey, more than most I think, but this one was a misstep.

The action scenes, while maybe a little repetitive, where great.... the barrel/river scene was incredible. and I didnt mind Legolas having a role in the film despite his character not being in the books.

Now on to the bad...

- When they first announced The Hobbit (a book shorter than any of the LOTR books) would be 3 films, I was very skeptical, but the pacing was handled well in Unexpected Journey. Now, however, that came into play in Desolation of Smaug.

- The Gandalf storyline was handled very poorly. Through the entire 2.5 hours of the movie, he meets with Radagast and goes to stir up shit with the Necromancer and gets pinned to the wall while seeing Sauron. Thats it... and that was incredibly thin. And the pacing back and forth between his "storyline" (its a stretch to even call it that) and the dwarves journey did not work well.

- The love story with Tauriel and Kili was horribly unconvincing and when she cured his poison, their exchange was cringeworthy.

- They really needed to go to the chopping block and edit a good 20-30 min out of the movie. Jackson needs to realize that not every film needs to be 2.5 to 3 hours to have substance. When the dwarves first arrive in Lake-town, the scenes went on far too long and the film really started to drag.

- All the build up to the finale with Smaug was very mixed. It felt like since Gollum wasn't in a LOTR/Hobbit film for the first time, Jackson "replaced" him with Smaug. Meaning, in The Hobbit, theres a very lengthy exchange with Bilbo and Gollum and I felt he tried to replicate that here (human interacting with a digital character). But it dragged on forever and kept going in circles.

- Also, Jackson made the mistake of "revealing" the black arrow way too early on. It was such clear foreshadowing that it was the only way to slay Smaug, so you KNEW the dwarves plan wouldnt work.... but we had to sit there and watch it play out for 30 min knowing it would all be for nothing. They took all the suspense out of it.


I still think theres a very good film in here, but the ball was dropped in the editing room.