And so it was over. The pacing of this movie felt weird because obviously they wrapped up the dragon cliffhanger from the previous movie in the first ten minutes, and then got on with the finale. And by the end, rather than dragging on and on and on as we did in part three of LotR, it just ended with quite a lot of questions left unanswered. So weird.

This was a step up from the previous film, a lot more entertaining, and mercifully, the movies are just getting shorter as we move through this trilogy. I was very surprised at the return of Legolas, because he certainly wasn’t mentioned by name in the source material, but I think he and the new character of Tauriel added a lot to the chemistry of the characters.

Wow, this was a really boring film, arguably the worst of the lot so far. I always knew there would be some stretching out of plot, given we’re milking three films out of one slim-line book. But this was beyond a joke. It was a full 45 minutes before they even started walking, and walking is usually the worst bit… this time I was happy they’d finally got out of Bag End. For a moment, when they were chatting on about the party at the beginning, I was worried we were just going to watch the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy again just from a different perspective.

I actually thought this film was really good, probably the best of the three, until the ending when it was so drawn out, I really just needed it to be over. In fact, from start to finish, there’s probably a really good two and a half hour movie in here, it’s just elongated in the worst way to drag on over three hours.

This was a bit of a rollercoaster of a movie, the second part of a trilogy so not really a film with a beginning, middle and end. This was all middle. And there were highs (Legolas sliding down stairs on a shield, Gimli being the comic relief, the continuing breakdown of Smeagol) and there were some real lows (I detest endless battle scenes, I’ve never felt the lack of women so deeply, the tree scenes: fun but SO SLOW).

I’ve seen this trilogy before, actually in the days when I used to go to the cinema, and I remember really liking them… although I think that was driven quite a lot by the enthusiasm of the friend I went with. It’s been a long time, though, and I wasn’t sure it would live up to that nostalgia - and I was right, it didn’t. But I did still enjoy it and for a lengthy film with two more to come, it didn’t feel too boring.

…

…