As impressive as Jackson's fifth foray into Middle Earth undoubtedly is, this time around there's visible stretch marks caused by the plethora of extraneous additions. For a film called The Hobbit I expected there to be a lot more Hobbit action going on.
The erratic tone and pacing issues of the first Hobbit have been sorted, but this only highlights how episodic the story is (they walk a bit,the dwarves do something stupid to put them in peril, Bilbo saves them, repeat) until Smaug appears. The expansions of the story don't all gel as well as last time either, especially the elf-elf-dwarf love triangle. Still, overall I enjoyed this one a lot more. The spiders of Mirkwood, the barrel escape, elves in action and Smaug were all stunning.
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