I just saw the final part of the trilogy that was made out of the hobbit. Same as with
The Desolation of Smaug I went in with fairly low expectations and by doing so I could enjoy the movie for not expecting to much from it. If one watches the hobbit movies (any of them) with the expectation of it being particularly faithful to Tolkien's work or with the expectation of them living up to the quality and the impression left by the lord of the rings movies one is almost bound to be painfully disappointed.
If one can keep out those expectations and watch it as a product in its own right it is a movie that can be enjoyed if not taken too seriously.
Same as the previous Hobbit movies the final one does include some very spectacular images and in some parts an impressive choreography. That later point however is also a weakness of the movie since it totally overdoes it in an attempt to appear epic for it. Unfortunately the result is mostly the opposite. Again we see orcs getting slaughtered at such a scale by elves that one must almost question if the killing rate does not sort of question the concept of who exactly the good and the bad guys are (this impression is further increased by the fact that the elven king Thranduil comes across as a total douche).
In combat elves (so long they are no "anonymous armor wearing dudes" = canonfodder) would fit as Marvel superhero cartoons with no real claim to realism but not so much into a Tolkien setting of fantastic realism. Admittedly they had the same problem already in the lord of the rings movies but for some reason they always seem to be been on trying to top the impression of total superiority of the "good guys" over the "bad guys" to the point where it becomes ridiculous. Same as sharpteeth in later LBT movies the orcs in this movie rarely come across as a threat.
CAREFUL THERE ARE SPOILERS NOW WHICH WOULD NOT BE GIVEN AWAY BY TOLKIEN'S BOOK
None of the "good" characters invented only for the movie and not being part of the book dies. I had been pretty sure that Tauriel (whom they had brought up to include an (in my opinion) rather cheesy love story between Legolas, her and Kili) was to be a Qui gonner, but in spite of the fact that she is pretty much used as a sledgehammer to tear down surprisingly fragile solid stone structures she survieves with just a few scratches being more scarred by the death of Kili (which had been part of the original story though not laid out as much as in the movie). On the other hand there are helmed orcs dying from headbutts by a bareheaded dwarf (Dain) and in one scene two of the dwarves announce they are going to take on a group of hundred orcs and NOBODY even gives and hint that they might get hurt in the process (of course they don't).
Appart from the harmlessness of the orcs the movie also somewhat suffers from the same degree of having been streched out for too long. The hobbit just wasn't meant to be a trilogy. On the other hand some scenes that would have been interesting were once again avoided / changed for the worse (in my opinion).
Anyone hoping to see more of Beorn will be disappointed. You are not going to see more of him than him getting dropped by an eagle and transforming into a bear while falling but not more of a fight of him (ignoring the fact that in the book he is not only the one to save the mortaly wounded Thorin from the orcs but also the one to kill the orcish chiftain who has been replaced by Azoc in these movies).
The subplots invented for the movie also seriously interfere with the continuity of the story as it feels a bit like the main battle is left on behalf of a kind of commando mission carried out by Thorin to kill Azoc.
One thing I found quite interesting was the way they depicted the Nazgul in a not quite coporal form at Dol Guldur. I think that their depiction was inspired to some degree by the appearance they had in the 1970s cartoon version of the lord of the rings when Frodo put on the ring. Whatever else I may think of the scene as such, I kind of liked their appearance.
So yeah, there is a lot that could be improved in my opinion and a lot that was done poor without any understandable reason. A lot of time in the movie was wasted that could have been used better. Nonetheless I don't regret having seen it. If one can watch it without comparing it to the book or the lord of the rings movies one can enjoy it (not as a master piece but as something that is okay) if one cannot and if one gets angry about movies not living up to high expectations one may want to avoid seeing it.
The elves and men in the movie are a lot more aggressive against Thorin than in case of the book
