The first one is the best for me, as I think it strays away from the source material less than the other two films. The main issue with the Hobbit trilogy is it was originally just supposed to be one film, since there's only 1 book. Guillermo del toro was also attached to the project for 2 years as the director. However the studio wanted more than just 1 film, so he agreed to do 2. Then they wanted a trilogy, so he said yeah this is going to be stupid & dropped out. Then they brought back in Peter Jackson. The Hobbit trilogy isn't completely garbage, however it's definitely not on the same page as the LotR trilogy. It suffers from too much CGI, doing things like including Legolas, creating the character Tauriel, etc etc etc.