It depends what I am ranking each trilogy against.
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The Lord of the Rings are a better set of films, but The Hobbit are a better set of adaptations.
But how does one make a judgement on what is (and is not) a good adaptation? Is it the tone, the amount of fabricated material, the quality ... and so on? There might be huge swathes of non-Tolkien material in The Hobbit, but we've got everything from the book *plus* more. You could almost read The Hobbit page by page and pick out where it appears in the movie. I don't think I could say the same for The Lord of the Rings movies. The Hobbit contains most of the book with (some might say) over-the-top additions (as well as non-canonical characters and timeline changes), yet The Lord of the Rings misses large chunks of the book and erases a number of characters (the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is almost unrecognisable). If we were being literal, The Two Towers movie is nothing like the book! I think the changes made to TH are more forgivable than some of the changes (and omissions) to the LOTR films.
It also depends on what you compare it to. If I compare The Hobbit to the The Lord of the Rings movies then I think The Hobbit is a better adaptation. If I compare it to The Time Machine then The Hobbit is an amazing adaptation. Whereas if I compare The Hobbit films to To Kill a Mockingbird or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest then The Hobbit is a worse adaptation. It's all relative.
Regardless of the above, I would always recommend the books over the movies.
(This post was edited by DanielLB on Jan 1 2015, 9:59am)
one must remember that LOTR is three times as long as The Hobbit, so it's no surprise that PJ had to cut stuff out. If he'd kept in Bombadil, it would have taken 20 minutes of screen time - to no purpose to the story except to get Merry the sword that would help kill the Witch-King. I don't have a problem with a film-maker cutting out stuff that doesn't serve the story - even though, as a diehard LOTR fan, I personally would have sat through 20 hours of film that followed the book exactly as written!
On the other hand I do have a large problem with film-makers adding stuff just to pad out the story so they can make and profit from more movie tickets. The Hobbit could have been done in one movie; two would have been fine; but extending it to three movies meant, for me, having to sit through way too many scenes that were not only not in the book but took the emphasis away from the main story.
Also, in LOTR I recognized all the places and the characters (with the exception of the Pink Potato Orc). In The Hobbit, PJ's penchant for excess made the Great Goblin ridiculous and the escape in the barrels a Disney thrill-ride instead of a clandestine operation. (I'm a whitewater kayaker and those dwarves would have drowned in seconds in a river like that.) His hyena-like Wargs were bad enough in TTT; the giant versions in The Hobbit were far worse. Ditto the amped-up versions of Uruk-Hai who did not exist before Saruman made them. Every time he went off the rails it took me out of the movie.
And this from someone who never really cared all that much for The Hobbit, so you'd think I'd be more forgiving of a film-maker who took liberties with the story. He took too many, and the liberties were way too excessive.
I sort of see them all as one entity, not two. They really go together for me. I loved LOTR for so many reasons. The richness of the stories, the sets, the whole quest to destroy the Ring of Power. The world so greatly created by Jackson. I love the Hobbit because of the focus on the characters, Bilbo and Thorin. The friendship there which to me was the heart of the films. I love the simplicity of the Hobbit and Bilbo's sparing of Gollum which led to the whole Lord of the Rings conclusion. To me they are entertwined. I love both of them for different reasons.
Maybe more out of nostalgia - not that I don't have nostalgia for the Hobbit already. I watched LotR when I was 11 and haven't turned back since. I have fond memories of marathons with my aunt and sharing the movies with my friends. I visited many filming locations in NZ which strengthened my love for the trilogy even more. Especially Mt Sunday. It's a beautiful place.
I prefer LotR because it has less CGI - one of the things that annoys me about The Hobbit is the wonderful CGI at certain parts and the shoddy CGI at others. I find the obvious scale doubles, ridiculous PJ moments and innovation charming. I love The Hobbit trilogy and it appeals to my inner child, but LotR will always be the trilogy for me.
Having recently rewatched the LotR-trilogy I must say: the Hobbit is nice as far as your average entertainment movie goes, but it doesn't even come close to the first trilogy. Neither in story nor in looks.
I think that excessive probably sums up my feelings on The Hobbit. While LotR was just epic, it seemed as thought The Hobbit tried very, very hard to be epic, but somehow missed the boat. For whatever reason, I just did not connect with the characters. I really wanted to, but just didn't. It was so overdone and so many liberties were taken with it, that for me it lost part of the charm of the book.
LOTR but really its too soon to tell
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My feeolings about the LOTR films have evolved over the years and my feelings about TH triology will too. Each movie has i my view been imrpved substantially with the extended edition.
Incidentally, I much prefer the way Bilbo's character was interpreted in TH to Frodo's in LOTR films.
Some of my favorite bits from LOTR went totally missing (like most of Legolas' actual character, and the elvish way with all good beasts, and as you mentioned, much of TTT).
I like the additions to The Hobbit films. I was never a fan of the book as much as I was of LOTR the book. Hobbit was too simplified... until the films.
I do enjoy The Hobbit films very much but in my opinion LOTR just blows them away. There are parts of TH movies that I just don't enjoy at all whereas with LOTR I can watch any scene at any time and love it. That being said, I thought the acting was fantastic in TH and Martin Freeman gave one of my favorite performances of all 6 movies.
First let me say I really enjoy both trilogies and thought they were both well done but LOTR just pulls at my heart strings more. It was those movies that made me want to read the books and thus fall in love with Tolkien's world, so I guess you could say I have a major sentimental attachment going on. There was also something about them that seemed more 'real'...maybe less CGI, I'm not sure, but I felt as though Middle-earth could be a real place. With TH, not as much the case, but still visually stunning.
But the things a lot of people complain about in regard to TH I don't mind. I thought a good job was done with the additions and I enjoyed both Tauriel and Legolas. And I do have to say I prefer Bilbo over Frodo. So I'm really a fan of both but yeah, going to have to go with LOTR on this one.
Well, The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, or else it's a double-trilogy, because of the six books... But if you mean as in movies (which I'm sure you do...) then it's definitely going to be LOTR.