Ranking the LotR and Hobbit movies

[The Monkey]

My ranking (EE for LotR, cinema version for The Hobbit films):

(Nostalgia probably has a large role in my ranking of the LorR movies, as I was just a little turd when I watched them on cinema)

Fellowship of the Ring: 10/10 - Amazing world building, atmosphere and casting. Might be the best cinema experience I've ever had.

The Two Towers: 10/10 - Fuck it. It has its flaws, but to give it any lower score would be lying to myself about how much I loved watching it.

Return of the King: 8/10 - It was a poor decision making Gondor so damn weak. The intervention of the magical ghost army made the earlier stages of the battle redundant. The symbolism of the battle, that Men could manage themselves and thus worthy of inheriting Middle Earth from the Elves, was also lost due to this. Other than that it had a ton of great scenes.

An Unexpected Journey: 4/10 -  I have no idea what compelled them to make the orcs CGI, but it was dreadful. Cartoonish fights and Radagast with bird shit in his hair notwithstanding, The Riddles in the Dark was superb.

The Desolation of Smaug: 5/10 - Can't for my life explain why now, but I remember I thought this was a better movie than AUJ when I saw it back in 2013 (haven't rewatched it since)

The Battle of the Five Armies: 2/10 - You'd think that they in a movie that was entirely about a battle would actually make an effort to make it good. But it was shit. Confusing editing that left you wondering about the geography of the battlefield and awful CGI. The silly love affair, while awful, was the least confusing thing about the whole cunting film.

[Maithanet]

It pains me to think that the prequels of one beloved franchise are just as bad as the prequels of another beloved franchise. Prequels really are the new sequels in terms of quality. 

I loathe prequels, but usually because they have no reason to exist.  Hobbit came out before LoTR, and had a different target audience.  The Hobbit prequels could have been good, if they'd just made them one long movie or two short movies.  Really making Hobbit should have been easier than making LoTR, it really doesn't require a lot of changes because "that doesn't work on film".  But instead they wanted to make them overlong to make more money, and as a result had to insert a bunch of useless action scenes that nobody cares about.  If it were shorter, Hobbit is actually quite action packed, between the spiders, the escape from the Goblins and the battle of Five Armies.  But since it was so ridiculously long, they had to add more action set pieces like "barrel escape with orcs shooting at them" and "elaborate plan to cover Smaug in gold which does nothing".  And of course whatever bloated action is in the third movie, like I said, I didn't see it. 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I think I'd rather watch the Hobbit films than the prequels. Even though I truly hate the last Hobbit film, they at least have much better dialogue and are, with the exception of the third film, less painful to watch.

[HexMachina]

I think I'd rather watch the Hobbit films than the prequels. Even though I truly hate the last Hobbit film, they at least have much better dialogue and are, with the exception of the third film, less painful to watch.

Well, pretty debatable on that front... On the one hand you have "I hate sand..." And on the other "I could have anything down my trousers..." so it's six and two threes really

[red snow]

as bad as the prequels are they at least have a beginning, middle and end within each film. the second and third hobbit films can't even manage that - they just are. Maybe if i could watch all 9 hours of the Hobbit it would start to feel like a film though.

[Howdyphillip]

as bad as the prequels are they at least have a beginning, middle and end within each film. the second and third hobbit films can't even manage that - they just are. Maybe if i could watch all 9 hours of the Hobbit it would start to feel like a film though.

 Out of the hours upon endless hours of the Hobbit trilogy, there were two scenes that were actually good for a total of less than 10 minutes of screen time. 

1. The riddle scene between Bilbo and Gollum 

2. The meeting of Smaug and Bilbo (until the stupid action sequence started that ruined it.)

Everything else in the films was complete and utter crap with the exception of the meal at Bilbo's house at the beginning of the first movie. That scene wasn't great, but it was watchable.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I think it's interesting to see that almost everyone has the same order, compared to the Star Wars thread which had numerous variations.

My rankings:

Fellowship: 10/10. Great movie, nothing else needs to be said.

Two Towers: 9/10. Another great movie, but super Legalos is just too over the top to earn a perfect grade.

Return of the King: 6/10. It's not bad, but it's not really good either, and there were a lot of painful moments throughout the film.

Also, I'm still offended this movie beat Mystic River for Best Picture, and that it won 11 acadamy awards. What utter and complete crap!

Unexpected Journey: 3/10. All I'm going to say is that it took half the film to get to the second chapter of the book. That's was foreshadowed (for me) how bad these movies would be.

The Desolation of Smaug. 2.5/10. This movie actually had a few fun moments, lost it a sea of craptasticness.

Battle of the Five Armies: 0/10. This film is awful. I award it no points, and we are all dumber for having seen it.

What's most frustrating about the Hobbit movies is it could have been good. The actors were well casted and they tried. If they had done a Kill Bill style 4 hour movie split into two films it might have worked. But alas, greed wins.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

as bad as the prequels are they at least have a beginning, middle and end within each film. the second and third hobbit films can't even manage that - they just are. Maybe if i could watch all 9 hours of the Hobbit it would start to feel like a film though.

The answer to the question of which prequel trilogy would one watch if they were forced to is:

Which ever has a shorter total run time, so Star Wars.

[Corvinus85]

 

Return of the King: 6/10. It's not bad, but it's not really good either, and there were a lot of painful moments throughout the film.

Also, I'm still offended this movie beat Mystic River for Best Picture, and that it won 11 acadamy awards. What utter and complete crap!

Those Oscars really were for the entire trilogy, as Fellowship was mainly deserving of most of them. And King didn't have that strong of a competition that year.

[BrettG]

LOTR hit for me at the perfect time, so I really don't think anything will ever displace them as my favorite films of all time.  So I put my bias front and center in that respect:

Fellowship 10/10

Two Towers 9/10

Return of the King 10/10

I will say that as time has gone on I still find all of them to be exceptional movies.  I understand why people might have qualms with ROTK, but none of those problems affect my enjoyment of the film, and a couple of them I think are just book snob problems.  To each their own, of course.  I also think that LOTR is the gold standard for adaptation from book to film.  Retaining the core story of the original while recognizing the necessities and limitations of the new medium.

It's therefore mind-boggling that the exact same production team could botch another set of films set in the same universe on such a grand scale.  Someone needs to do a Plinkett-style review of the Hobbit films, because they have almost the exact same set of problems as the Star Wars prequels.

Unexpected Journey 5/10

Desolation 3/10

Battle 2/10

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Those Oscars really were for the entire trilogy, as Fellowship was mainly deserving of most of them. And King didn't have that strong of a competition that year.

Agreed.

[Jabronius Maximus]

LotR is probably my favourite film series ever. The score is a masterpiece, and ties the 3 movies really well. It's amazing on its own too. It adds at least a point to each movies in terms of my ratings.

Fellowship - 10/10 - this film absolutely nailed the mystical atmosphere and sense of wonder. The trilogy got more conventional after this point, but they certainly weren't bad or even average films in my eyes. 

TT - 9.5/10 - less focus on the Hobbits, but seeing Helm's deep as a kid was freaking amazing. It still is an awesome battle sequence. 

RotK - 8/10 - I thought it was a good conclusion, but was downright silly at times. And the ending was just so damn long. 

Howard Shore's soundtrack - 12/10. Nuff said. 

Hobbit trilogy - 2/10. I didn't bother watching the 3rd film, and I'm glad I made that decision. It's a god damn kids' book, so why was it necessary to make it serious and LotR-lite? They really missed the boat on this. Bilbo could easily have been a loveable character on his own, without them cramming in all those reminders of the original trilogy. And that Sauron side plot, like all the other side plots, was just ridiculous (in addition to the main plot). 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LOTR hit for me at the perfect time, so I really don't think anything will ever displace them as my favorite films of all time.  So I put my bias front and center in that respect:

Fellowship 10/10

Two Towers 9/10

Return of the King 10/10

I will say that as time has gone on I still find all of them to be exceptional movies.  I understand why people might have qualms with ROTK, but none of those problems affect my enjoyment of the film, and a couple of them I think are just book snob problems.  To each their own, of course.  I also think that LOTR is the gold standard for adaptation from book to film.  Retaining the core story of the original while recognizing the necessities and limitations of the new medium.

It's therefore mind-boggling that the exact same production team could botch another set of films set in the same universe on such a grand scale.  Someone needs to do a Plinkett-style review of the Hobbit films, because they have almost the exact same set of problems as the Star Wars prequels.

Unexpected Journey 5/10

Desolation 3/10

Battle 2/10

BrettG,

Okay, what is being "book snobish" about disliking the scrubbing bubbles of death, recognizing how it obviated the sacrifice of the defenders of Minas Tirith and the Riders of Rohan or perferring the ever more subtle and interesting book Denethor to the carpet chewing lunatic portrayed by Peter Jackson.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

I think a major question has to be, why are the LOTR so good, and the Hobbit films so bad, seeing as how almost the exact same team made them. 

Personally I think a number of external factors led to a 'perfect shit storm' of clusterfuckery which meant that nobody was able to do their job properly. Plus I think a number of quite poor decisions were made quickly which might have been gone back on had there been time ( splitting up the movies, combining LOTR material etc). I don't really want to lay the blame on PJ and his wife, because its hard to know how much of it was really down to them, but at some point they need to take responsibility for that mess as well.

[Calibandar]

I will give it one thing, though - I love the scene at Dol Goldur. If anything, it's actually underplaying Galadriel's power - in the back-story of the novels, Sauron flees, and then Galadriel uses her ring to destroy the fortress right back down to its foundation herself IIRC. Plus, the Silmarillion has all these scenes written in it where great elves fight and defeat Balrogs, dragons, etc. That's the closest they've come to actually showing that on screen. 

 

Just to point out that there was never such a scene in the books by Tolkien, it is, of course, invented material by the Lord of Inventions. Phillipa Boyens, the scriptwriter and so called local expert, was the one who wanted Galadriel to kick ass, Dol Guldur was chosen for this. The initial investigation into Dol Guldur was by Gandalf, who went there a 100 years or so before the White Council finally did move against him. Sauron fled, as I recall. When the White Council came, Sauron did not flee, and in the books it was said that by the arts of Saruman, Sauron was driven from Dol Guldur. He apparently had the lead, clearly not in the film. What you recall as her bringing down the walls happens after the Ring has been cast into Mount Doom and Sauron no longer exists.

That said the version in the EE is one of the better sequences in the 3 Hobbit films, but still feels problematic because of "Dark Galadriel" who looks and sounds ridiculous.

[Fat Mac]

BrettG,

Okay, what is being "book snobish" about disliking the scrubbing bubbles of death, recognizing how it obviated the sacrifice of the defenders of Minas Tirith and the Riders of Rohan or perferring the ever more subtle and interesting book Denethor to the carpet chewing lunatic portrayed by Peter Jackson.

To be honest, as someone who watched and fell in love with the movies at a young age, a few years before reading any of the books, I couldn't have cared less what they did with Denethor. He was a lunatic, and I can see why a book reader would find that irritating as book Denethor was more a defeated man than a crazy one. Within Jackson's movie canon, it worked. When we meet Denethor, he's a loon, and he dies even loonier. When paired against the book it's weaker, but ultimately not a deal breaker. Nothing he did in the film defied logic or didn't make sense when considering his overall personality and previous actions.

The ghosts pissed me off in retrospect though, because I view one of the themes of the series as mankind/good triumphing over evil. But the ghosts ruin that wholeheartedly. If Aragorn was smart, he'd try and contact Theoden, saying he was on his way with an army of immortal invincible ghosts, and to hold off sacrificing a good portion of your men. It really ruined the triumph of mankind over evil when a supernatural force does all their work for them. While not quite a deal breaker, its the most glaring flaw in the trilogy, imo.

As I said earlier about seeing the movies before reading the books, it doesn't bother me as much that these changes were made. Perhaps if I had been in love with the books for years it'd be different. I'd wouldn't consider it book snobbery, but it is a book purist attitude (which isn't inherently bad. I'd be a hypocrite if I judged someone for this given my ever-growing hatred for GoT).

 

[dooog]

Peter Jackson needs to get cracking on a Tom Bombadil origins trilogy

[Spring Bass]

The best thing Jackson ever did was in actually making the segment from "Frodo finds out he has the One Ring" to "they arrive at Bree" interesting to watch. I've read the book, and that whole stretch of it still almost breaks my will to keep reading onward whenever I do it. 

Speaking of which, Cracked's bit on Tom Bombadil is one of the funniest things they've ever done: 

Then it's off to bed for the hobbits, who are ominously warned, "Heed no nightly noises!" which has to be the most terrifying piece of bedtime advice you can possibly hear from a man whose facial hair looks like it has unspeakable sexual appetites of its own. Frodo, predictably, is plagued by terrible dreams all night and wakes up to Tom shouting, "Ring a ding dillo! Wake now, my merry friends! Forget the nightly noises! Ring a ding dillo del!"

 

[HexMachina]

I know Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest aren't to everyone's tastes (I happen to love the slow paced events of Fellowship leadin up to Bree as it happens but that's neither here nor there) but I always thought the Barrow Downs was interesting and think it would have translated well on screen.

[dooog]

I know Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest aren't to everyone's tastes (I happen to love the slow paced events of Fellowship leadin up to Bree as it happens but that's neither here nor there) but I always thought the Barrow Downs was interesting and think it would have translated well on screen.

I haven't read the books since the 90s so it's hazy, but didn't the Barrow monsters involve, of at least lead directly to Tom

I remember going to Fellowship in the cinema and Tom's adaptation was what I was most looking forward to, like just the curiosity of how the fark were they going to put that character on screen, so it was disappointing. In hindsight i'm glad they left him out. Who could you even cast for him? Brian Blessed is the only person that comes to mind.