Ryujin
Legend
I realise that some purists hate the movies for not being identical to the books, but I like them. They tell the same story, but updated for a new medium and a new audience 75 years later. The Extended Editions are much more balanced than the cinema releases, and much more enjoyable. The EE of The Battle of the Five Armies is out now, and I'm inviting some friends round for a Hobbit marathon.
For me, at least, it's a little more nuanced than them just being 'different' from the books. I wouldn't refer to them as being updated for a new time, for example. If they were then they would have been altered to pass a Bechdel Test. There clearly weren't enough female characters to even come close and the only one of any substance was the target in a love triangle. Given that "The Hobbit" is a nice, relatively brief story it could have been told in a single one of Jackson's 3 hour long versions.
My problems with the movie are with the unnecessary padding of the story. We were given extraneous action-adventure elements, that were unconnected to the original story. The existing story elements were amplified to mythic proportions well beyond what the original story contained or what was required to tell the basic story, even given an "updating" had taken place. I would categorize it as 'splosions over story. In other words, at least from my point of view, there wasn't really enough substance to fill three almost 3 hour long movies. They were bad.