Hmmm… so they’ve got another throwaway token female character. Zippitydoodah.
You notice, also, that they have Legolas in it.
Movie fan pandering.
Come on. You can’t make those judgments until you’ve seen the two movies. You have no idea what their roles will be.
Another thing: yes, you can look at it from the perspective of yeah they just put her in because otherwise people would grumble that there aren’t any female characters–and maybe you’re right that that was the primary reason for the inclusion of her role. And yes, you can look at Legolas’ inclusion as “movie fan pandering.” In my opinion, you are missing out by looking at things through this perspective. If you want to make a critical analysis of a book-to-film adaptation, you have to look at things from a storytelling perspective–and I think that from a storytelling perspective, the devices you are criticizing make more sense than you credit them with.
First off: they are trying to adapt a good book into a good movie. To adapt a story successfully from one medium to another, you really have to reinvent a lot of the storytelling mechanics. Obviously, you have to be careful to capture the essence of the original narrative–but if you try a straight text-to-screen adaptation, you surely will not capture it. The directors and writers of The Hobbit movies decided to do this by expanding the narrative and adding some more non-action sequences (in the first movie, the scene with Galadriel and Saruman). In my opinion, this balances the yay swashbuckling adventures with their more serious context (which may have been Tolkien’s intent–see my next point).
Also, another thing to keep in mind is that he’s not trying to just adapt The Hobbit, which is really just about Bilbo’s adventures, he’s trying to incorporate the larger context that is hinted at in the piece “The Quest of Erebor”–the implications the quest held for the rest of Middle Earth. As far as the first movie goes, any the non-book content was exclusively dedicated to developing this. Dunno how the next one will turn out, but I am quite willing to accept the extra characters and seemingly un-Bilbo related action in light of the good job they did with the first one.
Also, stam, as far as book adaptations go, this is the closest I’ve ever seen to a close-to-the-book adaptation that was still a good (fantastic, really) film.
So basically, what I’m saying is while your complaints may have validity,
(a) They are irrelevant if the extra elements make it a better movie, and
(b) This may be more in line with Tolkien’s ideas regarding The Hobbit than a sticking-to-the-book adaptation would be.