The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies - 5 Reasons It's Awesome (And 6 Why It Sucked)

3. Not Enough Benedict Cumerbatch

After the dark ending to The Desolation Of Smaug, it was expected that Smaug's assault and subsequent death at the hands of Bard might comprise the first half-hour or so of the final movie, but Smaug is in fact taken care of in a snappy quarter-hour, making you wonder why Jackson didn't just kill him at the end of the previous film. A sad by-product of this fact is that it means that the final movie has little in the way of Benedict Cumberbatch, who did such a splendid job voicing the malevolent dragon. After his lengthy, terrifying monologues in Desolation, it was pretty disappointing that he just shouts a few threatening lines here before Bard kills him, and that's all she wrote. Though it's no doubt all the same to Cumberbatch, who likely recorded all of his lines in one go, to see the character built up so much only to be killed off in a relatively curtailed battle was a slight disservice (despite the overall brilliance of the scene) to both the character and the actor voicing him.