My first issue is that once again there are many scenes missing from the trailers (Azog climbing over the wall, Thrain the broken). I think PJ should give up on releasing trailers as he changes things right up to the last minute.

I think Beorn was done badly. Sticking to the book version would have been much better and Beorn could have gone out in the night to engage Azog and the hunter orcs. That would have given us a good dialogue scene and a good fight scene.

The river scene was missing from Mirkwood and they travelled through far too fast.

I thought compressing all Bilbo’s encounters with Smaug worked okay and I can see how it works better as a film than several encounters.

I really don’t like the design of Smaug. I originally painted my Lord of the Rings dragon green as I hoped there would be a Smaug model. Now I’m regretting that a little as I don’t think I’ll be buying a GW model (if they make one). I’m not keen on the 4 limbs instead of 6 but the head seems all wrong, too many bones and spikes and not sleek enough.

I do think being hunted by Azog adds a nice extra element of peril.

There were also a couple of really nice things that benefit from being made after LotR. I liked the statue in Mirkwood that had the Eye of Mordor on it.

I enjoyed the barrel scene and Bombur’s antics. Again the hunter Ircs added to the scene here.

Seeing Bard and his family also worked well I think. The black arrows were interesting, although I hope Bard uses his bow and not the contraption to fire it.

Anyway, I enjoyed DOS much more than AUJ. The barrel-ride roller coaster made much more sense than the goblin-town roller coaster, and was even over-the-top hilarious in a South Park kind of way with Bombur's barrel . The whole movie was graphically excellent as usual. Smaug being biped was a nice touch. The power hints of the Ring well crafted. Gandalf vs Sauron was great, and I liked the impact of Sauron's shape-shifting. Somehow, that partly humanoid shape he kept trying to achieve was more chilling than the eye shape, but if you know the lore it also reveals his frustration at not being able to achieve a full shape yet.

The dwarves stealing from the armoury was just stupid IMHO. How Thorin goes from thief-caught-red-handed to offering to share in the riches of his restored kingdom is beyond me. What Bard should have said was "but, this guy was just looting your armoury, you're going to trust him?" The whole scene would have worked better if the dwarves were just spotted and captured after a chase. Then Thorin's appeal would have worked seamlessly.

I also don't know how the lake-towners didn't notice a bunch of orcs running around on their rooftops.