Although shorter than the previous two films, the neverending action was quite exhausting.

Positive things first: I loved the fight between Smaug and the people of Esgaroth. That whole sequence I thought was beautifully done and doesn’t seem to stray too far from the book. I was pleasantly surprised especially by the way the dragon fire and the effects on the city were animated. Just like in the first two films, I also still liked seeing what Gandalf is up to during his times of absence. Especially the scene with Galadriel where they drive away Sauron was very impressive.

But then the rest of the movie just seems very stretched out. In fact, the runtime is very close to the length of the audiobook for the part of the book covered by this film.

The titular battle just goes on and on and on with ever larger monsters appearing out of nowhere. As expected, Asoq takes the role of his son, Bolg, who in turn only plays a minor role in this movie. The battle is only tangentially related to the battle in the book. The broad strokes are similar, but the details are very different. Neither Azog, nor Tauriel, nor Legolas appear in the book, nor do the dwarves ride a war machine pulled by goats.

I don’t mind action packed movies, but they have to do something interesting to keep the viewer interested. The John Wick movies are a great example of this. Even though those films also have a very large portion of the runtime taken up by action sequences, each scene always feels fresh and interesting, unlike this movie.

The weird love triangle around Tauriel also continues… and still feels out of place.

Overall, I feel like the quality of the movies declined sharply after the first. I didn’t find much to complain about with the first film, the second one I found rather… meh. This one, for all its action, I found rather boring after the first hour or so.