I like it, enjoy it for the most part and am glad it exists. But the politics comes off a bit weak and tips sometimes too far towards the self-congratulatory ethno-centrism of bad early 20th century anthropology.

I believe Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for in this regard. I feel like the LotR films were the watershed films for longlongfilm acceptance, and they are actually worth the watch in their longest forms.

But then The Hobbit films happened. I remember feeling that 3 films sounded ridiculous and that they were all unnecessarily long considering the length of the book and, compared to the original trilogy, they were rather horrible to look at.