Clip from the Desolation of Smaug

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

I think the worst parts of these videos are always the Tolkien dilettantes in the comments who shout "Appendices!" as the magic word for anything seemingly divergent from the source material. I'd be curious as to how many have actually read them.

This may seem like a sweeping generalisation, but I'm going with: none. None at all. I'm pretty sure otherwise some of these people would give details (you know, like where in the Appendices they think it comes from). And that they would notice major discrepancies. And that they probably wouldn't bother with this line of argument at all in a case where the Appendix version consists of a few sentences that duplicate information given in the main text anyway.

That said, I think Gandalf's exploring Dol Guldur is a quite legitimate thing to include, and the scene does look nicely spooky and atmospheric– until Radagast shows up, anyway.