I loved it; and since (as I’ve noted before) this movie is being made solely for people like me, the opinion of everybody else doesn’t really concern me overmuch. It is, in fact, a bit tighter and more focused than the first movie was; on the other hand, I’m pretty sure that there’s at least one bit in the movie that flatly contradicts the canonical history of Arthedain*. But them’s the breaks. I made my peace with this series not being 100% canonical a long time ago.
Moe Lane
*I decline to say anything, because spoilers.
And I still say that overall, the Jackson movies are more true to the canon than the book itself.
I still say The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo, not the “kewl” things that might have happened somewhere near him.
The thing to remember about The Hobbit was that originally Tolkien didn’t even think of it as necessarily being in the same world as the Silmarillion; it took LotR and a revised edition of The Hobbit (in the original, Gollum was going to give Bilbo the ring if he won the riddle game) to stitch those together.
A reference to *Arthedain’s* history? Your Tolkien geek-fu is strong.