My only concern about the decision to do two movies rather than three is the lateness of the decision. 'I have enough footage to do three films' just isn't a good enough justification in my opinion. The question should be 'can I do the story justice in two films, or does it absolutely require three?' I would have preferred the approach of doing two relatively tight cinema releases, and then geeking out with all the extra stuff in the extended editions, similar to LotR.
Personally, I love the decision to go darker. The subject-matter of the books was extremely dark for children's fare, even if the mood was much lighter than LotR. I remember being very affected both by the battle scene, the caverns, and the forest-fire scene when my dad read me these books as a child.
I also think the 'Tolkien's vision' argument tends to miss the fact that Tolkien was, himself, constantly revising and adding to his work. He just wanted to create something as absolutely epic as possible, and later in his career he felt that the Hobbit story would be more epic if it were more closely tied to the LotR story. Which is more important, the vision he had when he was writing the book, or how he saw the story in the context of the larger Middle Earth story later in his life? Maybe we're all guessing when we say what he would have wanted, but my guess is that he would love the approach of using all the Dol Guldur/White Council stuff.
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