I do think that Tolkien has succeeded in portraying the wood elves as good and likable characters. Although the dwarves and Elves don’t like each other and are enemies. That doesn’t make the elves bad characters. The story is about the adventures of some dwarves , so most everything in the book is in a dwarf's point of view. We don’t know much about what the elves are thinking because the book isn’t written in an elve’s point of view. Only like that we would know the elves are bad characters. Actually in the book Tolkien states the elves are good people. I really don’t think it was Tolkien’s intentions to portray the elves as bad characters. Only to show us dwarves and elves don’t really like each other very much. That is probably the reason