The books feel quite different in many ways. For instance, to take a minor point, you indicate you're "ready to return to Middle-earth", but remember that the name "Middle-earth" never appears in The Hobbit. (Neither does the "Shire", by the way.) It has long been clear that the filmmakers intended to strongly play up the connections between Tolkien's two different works, but in doing so, there may be a case to be made that they indeed, as you say of the later Star Wars films, "get the tone and spirit [of the book] completely wrong".

Well, I won't be able to judge for myself for another couple weeks, of course.