Just glanced at it. It fails my litmus test, at about 2hr13m. Oh, well.
Well, M4 here, I think this is a pretty poor outlook to be honest, I would not share a critical opinion over an edit if all I did was glance at one transition.
In terms of technical quality, the edit was still a WIP at this stage so that’s something to keep in mind, the transition has been improved. In terms of editing decisions, mine is a “book edit” (as advertised) so including the river battle would be the actual failure, I don’t know why you’d expect anything different or apply this test to my version.
Secondly, you cite Maple as being the best edit, which contains more than just a few small problems. An edit could pass your “litmus test” but still have blaring issues in other parts of the film including jarring transitions and moments that bog down the story.
The argument for the need to keep action with the barrel sequence is shaky at best, this is not a war movie. I agree a film should ebb and flow with a mixture of slow and fast paced moments but it does not equate to needing lots of sword fighting. Captured by spiders, fighting spiders, captured by Elves, escaping Elves, captured by Men, opening the secret door/arriving to the Mountain after all this time, etc are all very exciting or faster paced moments that happen in this section of the film in between the slower dialogue moments. I think one would be better off making an argument for keeping barrel action in the original–more longer–movies.
You can get to a point where if you’re adding action just for the sake of ‘well we need action’ that it starts actively detracting from your film. There’s no consequences, no one dies. It doesn’t effect the plot either. It’s just there, and in the Maple edit’s case he retains Kili being shot by an arrow which, yeah, gives you your exciting action that you asked for, but then Kili magically heals and his wound is never mentioned again, creating a jarring hole in the story. That would fail my litmus test for what makes a good edit.