I on the other hand will be surprised to see it change. I might not agree with the "blend 50 scenes together" approach, but it was a lot of work, and had to go through revisions and approval processes because of the license, I doubt anyone wants to waste more time on it.

Ultimately as much as it's disappointing, it's certainly not offensive, so as long as the playfield is great no one is going to care. Which isn't the most ringing endorsement ever, but hey, so it goes.

I doubt that's it. They waited to reveal until the Smaug movie was out. I would think it was more like "Smaug is the big playfield element let's not stick him on the side."

I'm with you though, F every dwarf and goblin, if both sides had just been Bilbo sneaking up on a huge ass Smaug chilling in piles of gold it would be awesome.

I feel like I'm being harsh on it, and I don't mean to be. It's technically sound, the composition is balanced, it obviously represents the movies well. I don't think it looks bad at all. I guess I'm with Rarehero though, it's just something Stern would have done, and I wish it had really knocked it out of the part with something more original. I also agree that the backglass part is the weakest, when it needs to be the strongest. Again, it's not bad, but could have been better.

Overall I think it passes muster, and we'll all forget about it once the playfield is available.