too much importance to females

Elf vs Orc is like Jedi vs. battle droids. No contest.

Cynical cash crab to get more bums on seats by including a female action hero and an absurd attempt of including a romantic love story into the Hobbit.

Do you realize that there are no female characters in the book? None, zip, nada, diddly... niente?

So they had to introduce some females, somewhere, and I wish they'd done better than Tauriel. Her fighting abilities aren't actually improbable; if you take a being that's stronger and faster than a human, and has keener senses and better balance, and give them hundreds or thousands of years of combat practice, well, they're going to be pretty damn formidable.

But the romances with Kili and Legolas were a bad idea badly realized.

It's a good thing then that they never used the deleted scene of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins being waylaid in the woods by two Balrogs who she decapitates simultaneously in mid-jump of a double back-flip.

Just watch a fan-edit : she is not allowed to exist in those (because they are made by FANS, not stupid WB a-holes).

At the most, she is reduced to being someone who says "Where is the keeper of the keys" when the Dwarves are escaping the Woodland Realm : I laugh every time that scene happens.

She is the "where is the keeper of the keys"-girl now and nothing else.

Incel.

I feel like it's a mix. Many of the male characters can do these things as well, but it's not made as big a deal of. You can view that as being pro or anti feminist I think.

I was annoyed with Tauriel, but more so because she was annoying than because she was female. And because her existence allowed for the worst love triangle ever. Oddly the second worst also involves the same actor.

I understand the desire to introduce Tauriel, as well as deepen Galadriel's involvement. It may feel forced at times, but it's not like they live in a female-free world, plus since they extended the shortest/simplest book to a full trilogy, they were looking for any filler. So it's authentic enough and Tauriel does feel like a character that could be there.