Knew the purists were going to be extra pissed after this one, but I really enjoyed it, despite the filler. I could live without elf boobies lusting after stubby chubby, but the rest of the added stuff was at least entertaining. The purists are going to nitpick like crazy, of course. I felt the pacing was a lot better in this one and the action sequences were a lot more entertaining. The battle in the dwarf city was worth the price of admission by itself, as far as I was concerned.
The key thing people are forgetting here is that Jackson is cramming the Necromancer together with the Hobbit, which were two stories that happened 300 years apart in the books and had drastically different tone to them. Liberties had to be taken with the story on that basis alone. Then there is the issue that Tolkien never wrote a strong female lead in the books, aside from Galadriel and maybe the Rohan princess who's claim to fame is smacking the Witch King and settling down with Faramir. The original books are basically just hours and hours of bromance with barely any mention of a female character in them. So you get this added in female elf (and the inflated role of Arwyn in the LOTR) to appeal to more modern audiences. I really have no problem with this if it means a new generation is absorbing this instead of Hunger Games or Twilight.
Anyhow, my favorite part of the movie is where they ended it. You could hear an audible audience wide groan and my wife is still bitching about it three days later. Fucking awesome troll job by Mr. Jackson! I look forward to the third, which should be 1/3 Smaug vs River People, 1/3 Battle of Five Armies, and 1/3 Necromancer wrap up. That will be an awesome movie, especially with the dark tone they are taking with the Dwarves in this series.