IMO The movie does stand on it own. My 65 year old mother had no issues following it at all. She's not a Tolkien fan, she was like "What it's over already!?!" when the credits came up. :)
The film totally stands on it's own. IMO half of that is what the critics are complaining about, the stuff that was included to HELP the film stand on it's own - the Bag End party scene to help get us used to a bunch of dwarves, the stuff about Erebor--that stuff they claim makes the first half "drag". Azog(I admit he could have been done better but I think the general idea to give the movie some urgency instead of just being a bunch of adventure vignettes was a good one).
The movie is easy to understand to anyone with enough of an attention span to actually pay attention to the film.
I think his point is that a lot of critics are acting like it's "bloated" based on wrong assumptions. As I said, look at the stupid Rolling Stone reviewer, he criticized it for including Rivendell, which he claimed wasn't part of the book!!! Of course it was part of the book!! LOL What they are really doing is just looking for any excuse to criticize and as soon as the film went from 2 to 3 they had an easy opening, even if half the stuff they are claiming isn't "from Tolkien" isn't true.
The film totally stands on it's own. IMO half of that is what the critics are complaining about, the stuff that was included to HELP the film stand on it's own - the Bag End party scene to help get us used to a bunch of dwarves, the stuff about Erebor--that stuff they claim makes the first half "drag". Azog(I admit he could have been done better but I think the general idea to give the movie some urgency instead of just being a bunch of adventure vignettes was a good one).
The movie is easy to understand to anyone with enough of an attention span to actually pay attention to the film.
I think his point is that a lot of critics are acting like it's "bloated" based on wrong assumptions. As I said, look at the stupid Rolling Stone reviewer, he criticized it for including Rivendell, which he claimed wasn't part of the book!!! Of course it was part of the book!! LOL What they are really doing is just looking for any excuse to criticize and as soon as the film went from 2 to 3 they had an easy opening, even if half the stuff they are claiming isn't "from Tolkien" isn't true.