I had little idea what was happening during this movie. That being said, I've read books 1-4, and I recently (read: three months ago) re-watched all the movies up until this one. Those movies stand on their own-- you don't need to read the books to appreciate them or be entertained.

That's not quite the case with this movie. There's a lot that's going on. And the crazy thing is, there's a lot of time spent on drawing out scenes which makes no sense. So pretty much, you have these long drawn out scenes, then you have a flurry of story elements and characters thrown at you that anyone who hasn't read the book will be confused by. Apparently a lot of these plot points will be explained in the second movie, mainly everything regarding what the hell was going on, why the sword was where it was, how they found stuff, etc. But frankly, if you haven't read the book, you will just be disappointed and feel betrayed. A great deal of plot points make no sense unless you already know what's happening. That's the main problem with this movie.

But is it a bad movie? Not really. It definitely has some entertaining parts (particularly in the second half of the movie), but it does have some cringe worthy, confusing, and frankly lame sequences. If you've read the book I can almost guarantee you will enjoy the movie. The problem is, this is a movie-- you shouldn't have to rely on the book to get the full experience.