i missed the start of the film. what happened before the point where he gets shot with the arrow? 

Also did you think it was too short? They should of had a bigger build up to the battle and made the battle a bit bigger at that. 

prob should stay out of here to avoid spoilers! unless you've read the book I guess. 

Gah, i left the theatre in a rotten mood, compounded by an aggravating street design and some asshole on my block who faulted me for parking comfortably spaced apart from the car in front of me because he couldn't fit his goddamn pickup truck behind (ended up moving, bumped into him on the way out, not deliberately, but because the jackass got exactly what he wanted, to be crammed in there so that neither of us could really maneuver out)

1) The Esgalduin is the one that drains the Long Lake, not the Anduin! I heard one woman say it clear as day

2) There is NOTHING to the North of Erebor. He told Legolas to "go north," which in reality is a good way to tell a son you're feuding with to go sod off because you're telling him to go off into the damn Forodwaith.

3) Mt. Gundabad is miles and miles from Erebor. The geography of it was specious enough even in The Hobbit itself that the Orcs could move from Gundabad to Erebor in the span of weeks between the death of Smaug and the Battle, but to have time for folks to go to and fro from it is just madness.

This is setting aside all the other craziness. Yes it was nice seeing Galadriel get to be badass, but you could've done it without taking a hatchet to the history of middle earth! Why did they need to fight the Nine, why did they need to fight anyone? They advanced, and the Necromancer retreated, because Sauron had actually been ready to retreat from Dol Guldur and go back to Mordor. You could have had a "battle of wills" between Galadriel and Sauron without having to get the Nine involved. And what's the "watch on the walls of Mordor" business? Gondor abandoned that watch almost 1500 years before the Battle of Five Armies

4) Tauriel x Kili made me facepalm and groan. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Look, i get that you want to make it epic, but the material was there. Yes, even if you wanted to make three movies, the choices they made make no sense, unless their goal is to piss off fans of the book like me. In which case they've well succeeded.

The way it is in the film is pretty much exactly like the way it is in the book. A small fight with smaug, then smaug flies towards lake town and burns it a little before being killed by Bard. 

And saruman isnt even in the original Hobbit book, and tolkein has never written (that i know of) in depth of Sarumans travels to the east to investigate Sauron. 

So christopher lee saw it fit to add some things in but not to write entirely new goings on.

2) There is something north of Erebor, There is the grey mountains and the entire region of Forodwaith.

Of course there is only anecdotal evidence that Aragorn traveled to these places.

3) Yeah.... Mt. Gundabad is on the other side of Mirkwood and then some. Its a little far fetched.....

I haven't seen any of the Hobbit movies yet. I'm patiently waiting for the trilogy to be released on Blu-ray. 1 more year should do it. Maybe it will even release on 4K blu-ray by then for the hfr version.
I guess I won't expect to much of it, after glancing over these comments.

Btw are they all in 48fps of was that experiment abandoned?

Saruman was never an ally of Sauran.  

Saruman was after the ring.  He wanted the ring for power.  He would have used the ring and killed Sauran and all his minions, but just set himself up as the new tyrant.  It's why Galadrial and Gandalf never took the ring, because they knew that no one could master the ring and would end up becoming a tyrant.  Thought Galadrial made that pretty clear in the Trilogy when Frodo offered it to her.

I saw it on Wednesday. I will say only this. The shit Legolas does in this one makes the shit he does in lord of the rings look plausible.

Saw it Friday, a solid 8/10. It doesn't come close to LOTR trilogy but it is a perfect way to set newcomers up for those movies. As far as I know, neither Sauron, Saruman, the nine or Azog the defiler are in the book, but Jackson has woven them into the storyline in a plausible way. A director should never emulate a book page-by-page but rather retell the story the way he sees it. But he does it better in LOTR.

Legolas moves are as crazy as ever, but he is an elf, it sorta comes with the territory :).

I liked the film but not the title. I can't seem to understand why was it the battle of the 5 armies when there was only 4 (Orcs, Humans, Elves, Dwarves) did they count the birds or something?