(Spoilers for some shit we've all read a bunch of times.)

You are not wrong about Hobert, you are exactly right. For example, the introductory scene with old Bilbo talking to Frodo right before the start of LotR, is like 10 minutes long. The party scene with the dwarves at Bilbo's place is extremely long. The fight against the trolls and subsequent hijinx is extremely long and badly staged. The Rivendell scenes are fine but long. The storm giant scene is pointless and long. The goblin-town scenes are pretty good. The Gollum scene is pretty good. The "birds in the trees" scene is long and badly staged. The filler scenes constructed from the Appendices/Peter Jackson's ass are variable, but mostly long. Did you ever know Radagast has half of his head covered in bird shit at all times? Not joking.

What I'm getting at is that the Hobbit is long.

Re: Jabba, Jabba is the powerful leader of a intergalactic crime syndicate one of whose major goals is capturing/killing Han Solo. Han Solo is a major asset to the Rebellion and Leia's space boyfriend to boot. If Jabba survives, he's certainly going to put substantial resources into going right back after Han and probably now the whole gang/Rebellion to boot. As a high-ranking member of the Rebellion Leia needs to make hard choices even when those choices involve killing otherwise innocent droids caught up in the situation. I'd also add that people don't seem to really consider droids to be sentient creatures, at least not universally.

It is debatable whether the attack was necessary or wise, though. A better option may have been to negotiate with Jabba to try and pay off Han's debt to recover him. Of course Jabba does seem to be a vengeful individual and it's possible this was already attempted and is simply not mentioned in the interest of servicing the story. Edit: of course it's also a pretty awesome PR move for the Rebellion's top guys to execute a stunning raid to rescue one of their own.

I can explain all this to Wylie the next time I'm down, there if you like!

Hopefully you enjoy the prequels a little better this time around. They are mostly terrible, but there are moments in each one. If you don't feel like rewatching AotC, maybe you could take Wylie to see Django Unchained since they have a same named character.