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Angmar? Angmar??? Why in the world would the Council have been discussing a depopulated region whose existence as an evil kingdom was over a thousand years in the past?

The bit about "darker minds will turn towards Erebor" can be traced to Gandalf's fears as voiced in "The Quest of Erebor".

The idea of tying the Trolls, Orcs (here in lieu of the Goblins) and Spiders back to Dol Guldur was an original invention, by comparison, but one which succesful at tying those otherwise disparate, episodic adventures back into the main story, which is important for a movie. Its a device Jackson imployed with Caradhras, where he has the storm be the result of Saruman's doing.

I mean in the sense that Gandalf figured that Sauron would have reclaimed Angmar to launch an attack on Rivendell and Lorien, which is quite explicit in both The Quest of Erebor and Durin's Folk.

Among many cares [Gandalf] was troubled by in mind by the perilous state of the North; because he knew then already that Sauron was plotting war, and intended, as soon as he felt strong enough, to attack Rivendell. But to resist any attempt from the East to regain the lands of Angmar and the northern passes in the mountains there were now only the Dwarves of the Iron Hills. And beyond them lay the desolation of the Dragon. The Dragon Sauron might use with terrible effect. How then could the end of Smaug be achieved?

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You're right, a live-action film--even one deliberately setting out to be child-friendly--is a very different beast than an animated adaptation. Though, if the Rankin/Bass Hobbit is insufferably twee, it gets some of that from the original book.

Generally, I don't think that such an adaptation should be "the shortest version of itself that's [humanly] possible" unless that serves the story as the filmmaker wants to tell it. Even so, we can see how poorly that worked with the 1966 animated short version of The Hobbit (granted, that was actually meant to be proof-of-concept for an animated feature-length film that was never made). Personally, I think that a 2-film adaptation without much of the extra stuff that Peter Jackson added (though I would still have borrowed from the LotR appendices) would have been ideal. Getting back to the book itself, the middle of the narrative comes in with either the rescue of the company by the Eagles or with their arrival at Beorn's house. Structurally, it would probably be better to end the first of two films with the rescue, and begin the second part with the introduction of Beorn.

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And there I disagree, because any such attempt would have to be invented from whole cloth: in other words, just fan-fic. Even if not as horribly bad as what we got (Nazgul tombs, anyone? Gandalf and Galadriel acting like schoolchildren passing notes in class?), it would still be spurious invention, not Tolkien.

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The Quest of Erebor, in all its versions, never provides Sauron with a motivation, aside from Gandalf's speculation that he could have found a use for Smaug when the war came... and the threat was to Rivendell, not the Iron Hills. We do learn that Sauron sent out his minions to hunt Thrain, for the sake of his Ring. But that was well after Erebor had fallen, of course.

To my mind, the only real place that QoE material would be useful in a Hobbit adaptation is the matter of Gandalf having to persuade (strongarm) Thorin into taking that ridiculous Halfling along.

Personally I liked the way they did it in the films with the Nazgul and the High Fells.

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so would your ideal Hobbit film/s not include the white council or dol guldur subplot at all?

If you were to end part 1 of 2 as early as the eagle rescue just like AUJ did then that leaves only a small part of the story to fill up that first film. How would that film work without the Azog subplot? To me AUJ only worked as a film in itself because they added in that extra (made up) subplot. What would be the over arching story for that first film without any major additions that weren’t in the book?

If you were to end part 1 of 2 as early as the eagle rescue just like AUJ did then that leaves only a small part of the story to fill up that first film. How would that film work without the Azog subplot? To me AUJ only worked as a film in itself because they added in that extra (made up) subplot. What would be the over arching story for that first film without any major additions that weren’t in the book?

Then part 2 would have to deal with a whole lot more. Start with Beorn then everything up to going back to Bag End, that’s a lot to cover. How would that work?

I think the barrel escape is the best ending for a film 1 of 2 but even then for obvious “movie” reasons it would have to be an action scene.

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And you can't recognize all of that as spurious fan-fic?

I do regard the term fan-fic as nothing more than a cheap and facile personal insult against the film makers.

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I think there are enough plot developments in the first half of the book to end at the rescue by the Eagles, though I can understand why there might be doubts. Quite a bit actually does happen:
- An Unexpected Party
- The Trolls
- Rivendell
- The Giants in the High Pass
- Capture by the Goblins
- Escape
- Riddles in the Dark
- Pursuit
- Fifteen birds rescued by Eagles

Don't forget that we could fill the film out with elements taken from the appendices.
- A prologue with Gandalf and Thorin in Bree (perhaps continued at the Halls of Thorin).
- Perhaps a sequence in Bree.
- White Council business between Gandalf and Elrond in Rivendell (the full White Council meeting and debate would be in Part 2).

For Part 2, we don't have to spend a lot of screen time in Mirkwood or with the Wood-elves, we just need to establish that a significant amount of time passes in those locations. Lake-town is a relatively brief stopover, the movie could take a moment to give Bard a proper introduction. There is a bit of a passage of time searching for the Secret Door and waiting for Durin's Day, but much of that could be glossed over--though maybe not as severely as was done in Peter Jackson's adaptation. Much the same for the period between Smaug's attack on Lake-town and the besieging of the Lonely Mountain. We certainly don't need to see every detail of the return journey.

Lake-town is a relatively brief stopover, the movie could take a moment to give Bard a proper introduction.

I don’t think Bilbo just finding the ring then giving a nice speech to the company about being willing to help the dwarves reclaim their homeland would be enough to end part 1 satisfactorily. The whole film would just be a series of adventures with a sudden “to be continued” type ending with no arc whatsoever to make the film stand on its own.

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The idea in the two-film cut was that Bilbo's ingenuity to get the Dwarves to the barrels was what earned Thorin's appreciation. You can still catch the buildup to the climax that never was in how Thorin comes to trust Bilbo when he tells the others to "do what he says."

So there is some payoff there.

Following just the book with added white council stuff would still make it feel like Act1 and I bet general audiences wouldn’t accept it very well. There wouldn’t be anything in the film that comes full circle or any kind of proper resolution. Thorin’s showdown with Azog and Bilbo saving his life were invented material but it worked to give the film some kind of arc. I don’t think Bilbo just finding the ring then giving a nice speech to the company about being willing to help the dwarves reclaim their homeland would be enough to end part 1 satisfactorily. The whole film would just be a series of adventures with a sudden “to be continued” type ending with no arc whatsoever to make the film stand on its own.