Originally Posted by Crane Hunter

They needlessly deviated from the source material too much.

As Christopher Tolkien put it:

“The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing…. They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25. “

Entertaining films for sure, and probably the last big film trilogy I was hyped for, but they are getting into reboot territory IMO.



Well the trilogy was budgeted at around 350 million by New Line so that kind of investment meant that the films could not take the "Masterpiece Theater" approach and still have mainstream appeal. And besides, while the LOTR films indeed had a lot of action in them, it was by no means mindless action like you would see in a Van Damme or Segal movie from the 90's.

It seems that what Christopher Tolkien really wanted was a mini series adaptation by the BBC.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”