The film opens to Smaug setting Laketown on fire continuing immediately from the ending of the second film. No spoilers will be included until the final paragraph where I will add in a warning. It isn't as climatic a finale as Lord of the Rings was which was disappointing. Since it's a full scale war in this last chapter, I expected it to be more dramatic. There were also some things I didn't like mainly because they didn't appear in the book and some scenes were edited out. Bard who didn't get much scenes in the book had his character more fleshed out in the film as a responsible father and a good leader. The destruction of Laketown was brought more into more detail. Bard's three children get a generous amount screen time even though they don't appear at all in the book. Some characters, mainly the dwarves apart from Thorin, Fili, and Kili, did not have much scenes. I'm hoping the extended edition for the DVD has more material. Sometimes I feel the film is awkwardly cut. The fighting wasn't my thing in the film unfortunately.
Things that worked well in the film were the charms of the Lord of the Ring series, mainly the CGI and music. I don't think there's a need for me to comment on the story itself. I read The Hobbit four times already and I haven't gotten bored of it. Luckily for the final film, it's actually not three hours long. The film score was not too different from the previous scores. It brought in a lot of themes from the first two movies and changes it up. It's quite obvious there's a generous amount of costume and CGI used in the film, but I feel in the final film it wasn't as breaking-end. The main reason for this is that CGI is used in almost every single film. Though the "defining chapter" was more subtle in tastes for me, it still retained the sad ending that the book had. Perhaps it felt more sad on screen than it did in the book. Being the book reader first, I had already anticipated the deaths, but due to rewriting the way the deaths occurred were a little less anticipated. I am ok with some of the rewriting in the film because it wasn't specified in the book. As a film, it still concludes the trilogy well leaving it on the same emotional note as the book did.
**From here beyond lie the spoilers of the film**
Once again, the extended edition of the film hopefully will have the scenes I want to see.
To expand a bit more on the review, there are specific scenes and devices that didn't sit well with me. My main disappointment was how some of the things in the ending was changed. I thought they were going to show Beorn carrying the body of Thorin away from the battlefield, but Beorn didn't appear much until the very last second. Thorin, Fili and Kili were separated from the main battlefield all the way to Ravenhill by riding on rams out of nowhere (like seriously where did these rams come from?) instead of staying on the battlefield. Thus this changes their deaths slightly and I say this because their deaths weren't specified in the first place. Tauriel isn't a bad addition to the story, but honestly her character didn't help progress the story too much and it wasn't developed further enough. Kind of like those Earth Eaters that also appear out of nowhere for two seconds except they don't even exist in The Hobbit.
Remember how in the first two films, they emphasized the importance of the Arkenstone? Well it looks like towards the very end, they didn't even show it. In fact they didn't even show the burial of Thorin, Fili, and Kili. We know as readers that the Arkenstone was buried with Thorin along with the Orcist, but it seems that in the film the last time we see it is in Bard's hands. They didn't mention how Thranduil claimed back the elven made necklace of white jewels and named Bilbo a friend of elves. This is my nitpicking on the changes. I guess it doesn't really matter if they showed it in the film or not.
The deaths may not have been how I imagined, but I think it was fitting. Fili and Kili's deaths were tragic, but it brings to the reality of war. No death is glorious for you can watch your own bloodline wiped before your eyes. When Bilbo kneels beside Thorin at Ravenhill instead of inside a tent, it still made sense and heightened the sorrow as Bilbo kept pointing to the lifeless Thorin, "The eagles are here." Killing off the Master of Laketown early on and bringing in Alfred as the sinister coward was a nice touch. He becomes a foil to Bard effectively highlighting Bard's good traits. We don't know what happens to Alfred, but it can be well assumed that he may end up like the previous Master. One of my favorite scenes was seeing Dain riding on an armored pig. As the Ironfoot fortified their battle front with shields, unexpectedly we see the Elves gracefully leaping out to attack the Orcs. Never did expect the Elves and Dwarves to fight alongside.What was also a nice addition was seeing Thorin succumb to "dragon-sickness". I think combining Smaug's voice with Thorin's gave a very evil presence.
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