A great movie, not-so-great adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2014)

Before I start this review, I'm going to put this out there: I am a Tolkien fangirl. I've read the LotR trilogy twice, The Hobbit four times, The Silm twice, and CoH once. So don't try and accuse me of "never reading the book" because guess what? I have. And you know what? I absolutely loved this movie.
I will freely admit that this movie deviates quite a bit from the source material. I will admit that I don't understand some of those changes. However, some of the other changes have really enhanced this trilogy for me. By that, I'm mostly talking about the subplot involving the Necromancer and Dol Guldur. That was a storyline I was always curious about in the book, and there is a disappointing lack of information on what exactly happened. I'm excited to possibly see the White Council drive the Necromancer out of his fortress in the next movie. The reveal that the Necromancer is Sauron was done very well in my opinion, though I have to question why Gandalf is now swinging in a cage...
Smaug was, hands down, the best part of the movie for me. Benedict Cumberbatch did a fantastic job providing the voice (and the motion capture, haha) for the dragon. The visual effects for Smaug were amazing, and if I didn't know better I'd wonder where they managed to find a dragon.
I was also very happy to see some character development for Bard. In the book we know next to nothing about him; he just pops up out of nowhere, because he was sort of a last-minute character. The foreshadowing that Bard would kill Smaug was well-done and interesting, though the whole deal with only a Black Arrow fired from a Dwarvish Windlance being able to kill a dragon was a little...odd.
Now, onto why I didn't give this 10 out of 10 stars: The unnecessary things that were added in. Mainly I'm talking about the fight with Smaug at the end, though there were other things that bothered me as well. Because, yes, there really was an overly-long scene that involved dwarfs running around the Mountain being chased by a dragon, which didn't even do anything other than stretch out the movie longer than it needed to. And Smaug's line at the end was very narm-y. The inclusion of Tauriel (though adding a female character was necessary) bothered me, and she doesn't fit into Tolkien's world very well. An elf/dwarf relationship completely contradicts what Tolkien stated, and somewhat trivializes Legolas and Gimli's friendship in LotR. Bolg being introduced was unnecessary since Azog already existed (though he wasn't supposed to). And the less that's said about the "Bombur Barrel" and the healing scene the better.
Overall, I absolutely loved the second installment in The Hobbit trilogy, despite the changes from the book.