I had never tried it since I don't have the hood (or filters). I just tried, though, and its very tight, but after working at it for about 10 seconds or so it finally broke free and then unscrewed very easily. So I think it just needs a bit of urging, but probably not a plumbers wrench.
The bigger, heavier, better put-together thing may just be pride of ownership poking its ugly little head up...

Honestly, I don't know. I know when I first got mine it made me think back to your first impression and I had to wonder whether we were living in different universes. But I just chalked it up to different expectations (I've never spent any time with an M8 or M9 and had to acknowledge that it might feel very cheap relative to one of those). Maybe you were actually handling a prototype that wasn't up to snuff?
The interface takes some getting used to - not nearly as intuitive as most other modern cameras, but once you spend some time with it, you figure out how to do what you need to do pretty quickly. It definitely needs a major firmware upgrade to do a number of things. To me, the only really critical change is to incorporate Auto ISO and the individual ISO settings into the same menu rather than in two menues a couple of submenus and levels apart
AND to allow the raw button and maybe the WB or one of the other buttons on the four way controller to be user configurable and essentially serve as a second and third function button. I can't imagine a camera of this quality having a dedicated WB button but no dedicated ISO button!?!? Nonetheless, you can get there from here and hopefully Fuji will make it easier to get there from here in a reasonable amount of time.
-Ray