Crappy Visuals
We get a few of those sweeping journey shots that I loved from the original Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and there’s a scene involving Beorn and Eagles that made me spill popcorn all over myself. Still, overall, I wasn’t wowed by the visuals here. In a film featuring an obscene amount of battle formation porn, it was disheartening to see such sloppily rendered CGI armies. I mean, they were virtually pixelated in some scenes. Also, there’s one particular scene with Thorin and a golden room that looked like a deleted cutscene from a mid-’90s squaresoft RPG. Not pleased.