These things I liked about The Hobbit:
a) Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins. A pretty much perfect casting. Indeed, honestly, I don’t think we’ve really seen a bad casting call amongst the whole series.
b) Smaug the Dragon - aside from a firework effect, one thing that was palpably missing from the LotR trilogy was a memorable Middle Earth dragon. Smaug was fully realised in The Hobbit.
c) A variety of Dwarves - not just one, but a whole diverse bunch of them with varying levels of beardiness. While still played up for comic effect, they broke down some of the stereotypes.
d) Wargs as giant wolves, rather than giant hyenas.
e) More Middle Earth. As a fantasy fan is worth noting that this will be the last time we have a Middle Earth movie on the big screen for an awfully long time (unless someone decides they want to remake them, god forbid…).
While there may be some criticism of The Hobbit, it is sobering to recall just how laughably bad fantasy movies were before the LotR kicked off. Go see the original D&D movie (released just a year before) if you want a reminder.