I never read the book

Check out the book, it's a fun little read. I also enjoy the movies. the good and the bad...well...maybe not Tauriel...can't stand her, lol

I didn't really dig them, but I don't think that is (exclusively) tied to my having read the book several times. The plots kinda meander around. A lot of people have pointed out that for movies called The Hobbit, they spend precious little of their collective energies on Bilbo. The narrative wanders around without focus - seemingly - and that lack of focus bleeds into a lack of character development, a lack of relationship development, and it becomes harder and harder to care what's happening with the CGI dwarves and their little hobbit buddy.

Next, I'd say that they just don't seem to have the high standards that made Lord of the Rings such an amazing experience. There's a great youtube video comparing the goblin town set piece with the Moria sequence and it breaks it down nicely. (Nerdwriter, I think...) Basically, The Hobbit films don't build tension the same way and they suffer.

I have a lot of nitpicks, too.

I mean, ultimately, they're okay. They're overlong, but decent action movies. Between the Lord of the Rings films, the books, and other fantasy films as benchmarks, though, it's hard for me to give The Hobbit trilogy a pass. Even on their own, though, I think I'd know that there was just something missing, and it all starts with that unfocused narrative.

I read the book when I was 8 and I enjoy the Hobbit movie trilogy as an old fart. Yeah, it's a fast and loose adaptation with a bunch of action movie tropes welded on. BFD. People are so hilariously precious about shit, as if the movies somehow obliterate the existence of the book.