I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I’m not one for failure, but I’m not one for punishing myself either, especially when said punishment is undeserved.

So here I am, trying to watch The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies for the first time since its theatrical release nearly a year ago, and I just couldn’t do it. Even had 20 minutes been cut from the two-hour-and-20-minute theatrical version, I don’t think I could have gotten through this Peter Jackson misfire, but with an extra 20 minutes added–for a grand total of 164 minutes–I felt physical pain as I inserted the Blu-ray into my player.

I largely hated the movie when it was released a year ago, a bloated finale for a bloated, unnecessary trilogy, full of CGI creatures hitting each other with sticks and characters defying gravity for no particular reason, where the stakes were so slim and uninspiring it was impossible to enjoy. Everything that worked so well in the original The Lord of the Rings trilogy failed in Peter Jackson’s follow-up faux-trilogy, and those shortcomings came to a head in the aimless finale.

So I tried to watch the extended version, not because I wanted to or even asked to, but because Warner Bros. sent me a copy to review and I felt somewhat obliged to do so. But having spent a year trying to block this movie from my memory, the thought of watching even more of it–and from the sounds of it, most of the extra 20 minutes were nonessential, extended portions of scenes that were wisely cut in the first place, not the interesting story arcs excised for time from the original pictures. The battles are allegedly bloodier, but video game-looking battles with blood are still just that.

I tried to, but I just couldn’t. So simply consider this “review,” if you can call it that, a reminder that The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, is now available to own, and if for some strange reason you liked this movie and want to see more of it, you know where to get it (i.e. on Amazon).