And yes, before we go further, I’m well aware that this meeting is cited in The Hobbit, and that many of Jackson’s other additions and digressions are part of the larger Middle Earth canon. But despite the fact the Tolkien went back to amend The Hobbit more than once, he never chose to cram in all this supplemental material, because the book was not intended as a sweeping, multifaceted epic, but rather as a more personal, hobbit’s-eye-view adventure story.

Not so, alas, in the hands of Jackson, who is so titillated by his various subplots and foreshadowings that he even loses track of his protagonist, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), for considerable stretches. Orcs—which played no role at all in Tolkien’s novel—play an even larger role in this installment than in the previous one, the better to supply the many impalements and beheadings Jackson feels compelled to display. Forget cameos by LoTR veterans: In this film, Legolas (likewise never mentioned in the book) reappears as a principal character. (It’s hard to shake the suspicion that Orlando Bloom’s asking price must have come down considerably from its inflated, post-LoTR high.) And the identity of the mysterious necromancer who has begun forming his armies of darkness, fiercely implied in the first movie, is made all too painfully explicit by the midpoint of this one.

A brand-new character is thrown into the mix in the form of a woodland elf named Tauriel (played by Evangeline Lilly, or “Kate from Lost”), who quickly becomes the crux of an interspecies love triangle. And Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) has been semi-demoted to Bard the Bargeman (the movie spends a lot of time in Laketown), though there’s little doubt that he’ll be given the chance to earn his loftier nickname using a newfangled Dwarvish anti-aircraft crossbow in the trilogy’s next installment.

Yes, next installment. Though Bilbo and the dwarves do make it at last to the Lonely Mountain to encounter the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), the great worm will have to wait until the final movie to intersect with his arrow of destiny. Instead, he spends the latter part of this film contending with a borderline MacGyveresque plot by the dwarves to bring about his destruction deep in the halls of Erebor. (I hope I’m beyond the point where I need to note that this, too, is a Jackson invention.)

What can be said on the movie’s behalf? Well, because it starts in the middle of the story and ends somewhat later in the middle, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is less encumbered by exposition than its predecessor, and is therefore free to devote itself fully to action set-piece after action set-piece (most of them, again, involving orcs). Smaug himself is an impressive accomplishment of CGI, though one who never quite succeeds—unlike, for instance, Gollum—in shedding his CGI skin. And at least this time around we’re spared Radagast’s bunny-powered sleigh.