The Desolation of Smaug

Told myself I wasn't going to see it because the first one was pretty bad and adding Fredkles to the mix was just a posthumous slap in the face to Tolkien. BUT, I honestly put my prejudices aside and had a let's just watch a popcorn flick with an open mind.

Long story short: It was pretty good up until the very end.

Long story: Everyone knows I'm a book reader and have already turned on Peter Jackson and have no respect for him anymore. That said, adding Freckles character to the mix wasn't that bad, especially since they didn't make it a love story with Legolas. I kind of liked she was digging Fili.

The conversation between Bilbo and Smaug was the best part of the book and up until the end was the best part of the movie. But Jackson just couldn't help himself and make a creepy, soft ball it into you good story and you just make it a 10 minute long fight scene just so it would look cool in 3d (I didn't see it in 3d but that much was obvious). And then have the elves do theis elaborate scheme to pour melted gold on a... DRAGON. Yes because that will do the trick.

My biggest complaint though is the same as it was for the first. The Orcs look like crap. You have 2-3 main orcs in your story, would it of been that much harder to dress some dudes up? I'm not even asking you to do it in bulk, just the few main ones. Half the time an Orc is on the screen Im thinking god these look like crap and it takes away from the movie. Scorpion from mortal kombat (1995) looked better than Bolg. I'm currently watching mortal kombat and that is my observation.

Casting Billy Rae Cyrus as Beorn was pretty crappy too.

Overall not nearly as bad as I was expecting, but still, not that great.

TLDR