When the second Hobbit movie desolated the book by introducing new characters, injecting Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and throwing in romance, I stood by it. I believed that such an old book could use some renovations. I enjoyed the battles it invented. I thought that, even though the movie was very different from the book, it still triumphed cinematically. This is not true with the third installment.

I could understand complaints from fans about how the movie took significant liberties with the book, but that isn’t why this movie is so bad. In fact, I think one of the only things keeping this movie slightly afloat is the fact that many Tolkien fans defend the movie because they hate seeing the Hobbit name besmirched. So to remove that bias, we’ll just consider this movie as if there was no book.

The movie starts out poorly. Everything that happens in Dale is painful to watch. Actually, not everything–Smaug’s attack was pretty good. But he gets reduced to basically a cameo when he is killed off almost instantly. Now, of course, his death was never intended to be the climax of the movie, and that’s fine. But in a movie so satisfying visually, they certainly could’ve allowed him a little more destruction.

Regardless, in the aftermath of the attack, everything is just pathetic. I mean that in the most spiteful way possible. I restrained myself from leaving and saving two hours of my night, and that was hard. The pinnacle of this mess was Kili (Aiden Turner) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) starting their soap-opera romance. I don’t know who decided that the Hobbit needed a romance, but they ought to be fired immediately. No one–I repeat, no one–went to see the Hobbit as a romantic flick.

One problem with action movies is the lack of female leads. I appreciate trying to introduce a strong female character, as Tauriel did in the second movie. But that chance at prevailing feminism is ruined by reducing her role to only a sappy love interest. Her character is a sloppy attempt to modernize the Hobbit. She loves and loses Kili, which I guess is supposed to tug at our heartstrings. She tells Thranduil (Lee Pace) that he doesn’t have any heart, and he responds that she doesn’t know what love is. I don’t know what the point of this was. I cannot state this enough: an action-fantasy movie is not supposed to be about love.

Furthermore, this whole idea of love as a motivating factor in this movie is just stupid. That’s the right word, stupid. Thranduil banishes Tauriel because she doesn’t understand love. Then, he tells her that her love with Kili was real. So what? It changes absolutely nothing. It just adds an idiotic element to the film. Rather than developing the already convoluted plots so that they work well, the film tries to appeal to a teenage crowd. Leave the love to John Green novels, please. It’s almost like the film producers had so little faith in the production that they tried to reach out to every possible crowd. I’m surprised they didn’t throw in zombies, vampires, and a young athlete just trying to make a name for himself.

I cannot say anything else about that aspect of the film without breaking someone’s neck, so I’ll move onto the other big problem: for a movie titled “The Battle of the Five Armies,” it’s surprisingly low on big, army clash-style warfare. The best thing about the Hobbit movies, and certainly an important part about the Lord of the Rings adaptations, is the incredible fight scenes. And while there are some great scenes in this production, it isn’t anything new. We should be seeing these massive clashes between orcs and elves and goblins and men and dwarves and anything else they can throw in (besides love–that never goes well). But instead, we have some little battles and it’s done. The best scene in the entire movie is when the eagles come and they are literally dropping bears (Beorn) on the enemies. It makes me want to scream “That! That! Do more of that!” right in the theater.

The only redeeming aspect of the film is the ending, which plays right into the start of the first LOTR movie. I’m glad they put it at the end, too, because you leave with a better impression than what the movie deserves. But it cannot overshadow the overall badness of the film. Nearly every shot of Bilbo (Martin Freeman), the protagonist, is a moment of his apathy towards the whole situation. Some character named Alfrid (Ryan Gage) is supposed to be some comic relief because he doesn’t want to fight. Alfrid tries to escape in drag but is caught and called a coward, to which he responds that he is brave to wear a corset. It’s this kind of low-brow, dumb humor that makes this movie an insult. They don’t put any effort into it. Plain and simple.

Without regarding the last two minutes, this movie might be the worst I’ve seen. It doesn’t do its job as an action movie. It tries to throw in some love which, besides completely defeating the purpose of a strong female character, just completely fails. It tries to become a comedy, which fails because a) no one went to see a comedy and b) the jokes are literally devoid of any humor. It also leaves a lot of unanswered questions, like what happens to the gold in the mountain, or the Arkenstone, or the characters that don’t reappear in the LOTR. I guess every director makes their share of bad films; it’s just a shame that Peter Jackson had to do so poorly on this trilogy finale.

Check out the January print edition of the Newsstreak for a different take on the movie.