The dozen or so minutes of extra scenes are not really worthwhile. There's more fart jokes with the dwarves carrying on like football hooligans at Rivendell. The humour just falls flat for me. It wasn't always successful in LOTR (drinking game, dwarf tossing, burping, etc) but here it's even worse.

So forget the few minutes of longer scenes, and look forward to the commentary and hours of superbly produced extras.

Watch out for the new podcasts, Voices in your Head and What are you doing, Yahweh?

Apart from the stunning VFX (those render times must have been horrendous), I enjoyed the fact that the movie was NOT about saving humanity. There was no portal to close that was about to let an alien invasion take place. There was no evil super villain.

Having only two characters and lots of still scenes and long takes make excellent use of the 3D. Other 3D movies suffer by having too many edits, shaky cam, and too much action for the brain to process.

A couple of minor downsides: the 'gotta get back on the horse' character-arc sub-plot was a bit forced, and a couple of physics quibbles (fire extinguisher, Clooney sacrifice).  Not enough to ruin the movie though. No where near it.

Yes, strictly speaking we should be agnostic about everything - the sun may not rise tomorrow, the chair you're sitting on may collapse underneath you, the tennis ball may quantum tunnel through your racquet (happens to me all the time).

But if the overwhelming weight of evidence supports one proposition and there's no evidence supporting the opposite view (if fact, plenty of evidence that it's fiction), then for practical purposes we can take the philosophical shortcut and revise our agnosticism to outright atheism.

If you still insist 'no, no, you have to be agnostic - there could still be a God', then you need to honest with yourself that you're leaving the door ajar for emotional reasons, not logical ones.

This movie only just opened in the UK, about.... like.... like.... 14 years after you guys in the USA have already seen and forgotten it.

But, bloody hell, that was fantastic! Saw it in IMAX 3D - the long takes and suspense and cinematography and fancy camera moves were just amazing. Makes all those endless superhero movies boring by comparison. Movie of the year so far!

Yes, there's already enough real divisions within humanity: gender, class, race, age, disability, sexuality, etc without having to invent imaginary divides.

A C Grayling, a secularist philosopher in London, was visiting a multi-denominational school that was boasting of how accommodating it was to all religions. Muslims kids were friends with Christian and Hindu kids, etc. And he asked one of the kids 'what do you think will happen to your friend when he dies?' And the answer was 'he'll go to hell'. And somehow the kids could be friends at the same time 'knowing' that the friends they sit next to in class and play with in the breaks, will one day be tortured for ever.

7 years ago, this badass meme was everywhere...

Good one. I'll raise you...

Burke: Hold on a second. This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it.
Ripley: They can bill me.

Who didn't have a lump in their throat when Theoden turned up...

Ride for ruin... And the world's ending

Immortal line from Aliens that used to bring the house down...