There’s an action sequence at the end that is even more incoherent and even more pointless, as the dwarves run from/attempt to battle Smaug beneath the Lonely Mountain. I often wasn’t quite sure what was going on in the barrel chase - the dwarves would suddenly have weapons despite losing them previously, and I’m sure that was set up somewhere, just not well - but in the Lonely Mountain sequence there’s no way to know what’s happening. It’s a video game sequence - escape the dragon in the halls, get to the dwarf forges, light the dwarf forges, go to different rooms and Press X to do different aspects of lighting the forges/fighting off Smaug, get a cut scene reward. It’s awful. Within the context of the movie it makes no sense; Thorin has a plan to light the forges, but never explains why or what it will take to make it happen. It’s a sequence that keeps throwing meaningless action upon meaningless action, climaxing in a moment of stunning meaninglessness. It’s bad storytelling; the audience needs to be in on what the dwarves are doing, or to understand the geography of the Lonely Mountain, or to have at least a sense of what the goals are. We don’t. It’s sound, fury, etc.