3 out of 5 stars

  In the second installment of The Hobbit trilogy, Peter Jackson continues to find interesting, new ways to bring Middle-Earth to life. The movies protagonist  Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), continues on his quest in taking back the dwarves home, Erebor, from the dragon Smaug.

  The movie has, as all of Jackson’s movies have, great story telling. However, the story within this film is quite off from the beloved J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel. Jackson, in the first two movies of this trilogy, has taken the liberty of adding in characters that never existed within Tolkiens original novel. Such as the evil white orc Ozg the Defiler and Tauriel t I’m not disposed to this idea of new characters, but what was so great about The Lord of the Rings trilogy was that they were very close to the novel.

 Additional things that made me dislike the film was the computer animation of Legolas (Orlando Bloom). His eyes, and moves were computer generated which really aggravated me, it looked nothing like the elf that we all loved in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which he also had a major role in.

  The bright spot of this movie was definitely getting to see the Smaug himself. He was beautifully created and was voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. He was so sinister and lurring, almost seducing you while listening to his dramtic voice. Honestly, seeing Smaug made the film and if the audience had to wait until the third installment than this movie would not have been as exciting as it is currently .