Hot take: It’s not that LotR was a fluke, it’s that it’s massively overrated. It’s just your standard big-budget American blockbuster with amazing visuals and music that does little more than pay lip service to its source material. I have to laugh when people get up in arms about the character derailment of Luke in the sequel trilogy but nobody bats an eye at Aragorn just straight-up murdering Mouth during negotiations in RotK. I likewise don’t get the hate for the Hobbit movies, as if they’re somehow obviously worse than LotR. I really don’t see it, to me they’re just more of the same.
Yup, few people remember how few and far between big budget fantasy films used to be. Computer graphics have gotten cheap enough now that we see big fantasy sets all the time. Back when LOTR hit it was really rare for someone to cater to the fantasy crowd on the big screen, especially for a whole trilogy.
Much like the original Tolkien novels are a hard read but still seen as classics because they laid groundwork for the genre, the movies are seen as classics because they came first. They are probably Peter Jackson’s best movies but that’s only because he got even worse at editing as he went on.
Well, kinda. Yes in the sense that it makes people’s blood boil, no in the sense of being poorly thought out due to being hastily formulated. It’s been twenty years, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.
Hot take: It’s not that LotR was a fluke, it’s that it’s massively overrated. It’s just your standard big-budget American blockbuster with amazing visuals and music that does little more than pay lip service to its source material. I have to laugh when people get up in arms about the character derailment of Luke in the sequel trilogy but nobody bats an eye at Aragorn just straight-up murdering Mouth during negotiations in RotK. I likewise don’t get the hate for the Hobbit movies, as if they’re somehow obviously worse than LotR. I really don’t see it, to me they’re just more of the same.
Yup, few people remember how few and far between big budget fantasy films used to be. Computer graphics have gotten cheap enough now that we see big fantasy sets all the time. Back when LOTR hit it was really rare for someone to cater to the fantasy crowd on the big screen, especially for a whole trilogy.
Much like the original Tolkien novels are a hard read but still seen as classics because they laid groundwork for the genre, the movies are seen as classics because they came first. They are probably Peter Jackson’s best movies but that’s only because he got even worse at editing as he went on.
Your hot take is definitely a hot take.
Well, kinda. Yes in the sense that it makes people’s blood boil, no in the sense of being poorly thought out due to being hastily formulated. It’s been twenty years, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.