Sure, but you don’t need 6 hours of film to do the Hobbit, that’s just indulgent. Or maybe they are trying to conform to the “trilogy” format, since Hollywood doesn’t know how to do anything other than copy things that were previously successful.
I would agree with you that 6 hours is too long for the Hobbit, but I want every bit of information of Middle Earth that is relevant in the movies, including the stuff that would fill out the background of Elrond and Smaug and whomever else. However, relevancy is the main qualification.
Some scenes in the first movie were quite superfluous in how it was done, like them running zig zag over what seems to be a small field when the party was being chased by orcs. That certainly could have been handled better.
One of the problems I had was the scenes with the Goblin King. The stunts during the action sequences just weren’t convincing to me.