Great article. I have to say I liked The Hobbit films, for all their undoubted flaws. Yes, they are not in the same league as The Lord of the Rings films. Yes, they seriously overegged the pudding, adding lots of unnecessary extras, detours, new characters, and so on. And yes, they should have been two films at the most. But some bits of it I loved - especially Gollum's riddles, and the conversations with Smaug.