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As you gather from the title, this wasn't what I'd hoped.

First, we got punished for reserving for the midnight showing.  After that got booked nationwide, someone in production or distribution decided to open up earlier slots in the evening for all the people who didn't respond in time. So the latecomers managed to book earlier shows.

I'd hoped to see it on the Imax screen, but that was reserved for people doing the three movie marathon, and that was 8 hours I didn't want to sit in the theater.

So there were about a dozen of us in a standard theater. And the guy behind me kept practicing a tap dancing routine (literally) every two or three minutes (literally).  When I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked him to stop, he did.

On to the movie.

The problem with this section of the story is there's not a lot of character to discover, other than Thorin's fall, which was done well enough.  We have good character background on the others, and there's not much more to develop.

We did get to see the reveal of Sauron and the foreshadowing of the threat to come, and Saruman showed some depth, because Christopher %#$@ing Lee is awesome.

Laketown is too far from the mountain here, so rather than the refugees using the perfectly serviceable forest with game, timber, fresh water and nearby fish, they move up into the abandoned town across from the mountain, miles from anywhere, and are short of rations. Duh.

The battle was a huge mess, with some good scenes including the shield ramping, but otherwise was hack and slash from different POVs for an hour.  We've seen this before. The dwarves smashed, the elves shot and slashed, the men did what they could.

The cherry atop the turd was the resolution of the love arc between Fili and Tauriel.  Everyone saw it coming, and Jackson had a chance to NOT be cliche, and sold out.  Everyone was rolling their eyes and groaning, though some of that might have been the scenery protesting at being chewed.

It's one weak movie of six, but since it's the conclusion of this arc, it diminishes the entirety of The Hobbit.  They could have got as much material into two slightly longer movies, or they could have used this one to delve into more backstory, more detail on different fighting styles or overall strategy.

You're going to see it just to resolve the trilogy, but don't expect to be blown away.  It's once again "We need MOAR! special effects and mayhem or people won't watch!" sellout and cliche.