The point of the trilogy isn't Sauron or to fear him.

He is just a tool to tell the actual Story.

The core Story is about a group of people coming together and going on this grand journey. It's about friendship. It's about love. It's about making things right, when you fuck up. It's about no big hero in a cape, but a normal small person just trying his best when the world is about to end.

It's about people. Not about Sauron.

Did you watch it on mute?

It's been a while since "explain to me why this is good" post has been here, and they're always super fun because no matter what anyone says, no one has any chance of changing even the slightest portion of your mind. So it'll just be an exercise in frustration for everyone involved.

They are objectively well filmed and shot. As to your tastes and enjoyment, well, that part can't be measured the same way. For me, I don't enjoy The Godfather but it is clearly a well made movie, it's just not something I, personally, found enjoyable.

Their quality is just outstanding and has no right to be that good

What makes the LOTR movies special to me, an my all time favorite movies is not just the story or the action scenes (which both are amazing imo) but the whole middleearth-world with its incredible atmosphere and characters. This paired with one of the best movie soundtracks of all time by Howard Shore just makes it a masterpiece of storytelling and filmmaking for me.

But what I realised over time is, that I have to be in a very special mood for those films. Like I can't just watch them when I am bored, because I know that I would just not enjoy them as much. I think LOTR requires a special feeling while watching to fall in love with it.

I read the books years earlier, and thought they would be largely unfilmable. Few even tried e.g. the animated adaptation from the 1970s wasn't completed properly. So respect to the screenwriters for making some necessary changes without doing a Hollywood hack job on the story.

If you're used to a conventional 3-act structure over 2 hours, I get why you'd think the movies to be slow. But we're now in an era where film-makers don't have to lock themselves in to conventional movie constraints: you just see the results on Netflix as a 10-part miniseries, not in the theaters as a movie.

Maybe it's just not for you. I have watched movies and shows before which most people seem to like and I didn't feel the same way

Sometimes a rewatch fixes that issue but most times I just conclude that the problem is with me.

That's why I find it weird when some people say a universally liked movie is bad. If it's universally liked, then there is a higher chance that you are the problem than that the movie is bad

I disagree with the suggestion that watching the extended editions will make it better to you. The extended editions are wonderful for people who love the movies and want more of that world, but they don't add anything substantial that changes them in an appreciable manner. It's just more time in that world. There's a few scenes in them that are great but they don't really add anything, they more just accentuate what's already there.

If you don't like them, you don't like them, and that's all cool. But just from a technical standpoint they were groundbreaking films, and being filmed back to back gave them a narrative consistency that is hard to beat in any trilogy.

I could mention a hundred things that make The Lord of the Rings one of the greatest cinematic achievements ever. From the music to the cinematography, to the fact that it was the biggest gamble in the history of cinema, or that it's probably the best adaptation of a book in cinema history. I don't have the time to do that, though, so I'll cut it short. You don't need to show Sauron do evil to know he is. On the contrary, I think it would severely damage the movie. I won't get into details about Tolkien and his themes, but what Sauron is meant to represent is a concept more than just a bad guy. He doesn't do much in the books as well. But every evil deed, every villain and every seed of corruption in the story stems from him. You don't see him embodied on screen a lot, but what you do see is the consequences of his actions. The One Ring is the embodiment of Sauron, and Sauron is the embodiment of Evil. One of the reasons for this is Tolkien's passion for epic and myth and, most of all, his veeeeeery strong catholic faith. I agree that the characters are not at all psychologically complex (with the one exception of Smeagol, who I think is amazingly complex), but that's kind of the point. The Lord of the Rings is more meant as a mythological story than a novel, and the movies manage to capture that so beautifully that I find it hard to see anything I would change about them. Apart from maybe a couple of Legolas antics.

In short: it's a story driven narrative meant to represent an insurmountable fight against Evil incarnate and the corruptive properties of absolute power. It's absolutely not character driven, as it was intended as part of a new English mythology rather than a classical Hollywood flick. The movies reflect that and I think (and apparently the Academy does as well) that the result is one of the best (if not the best) things ever done with a camera, but to each their own.

Because they are THAT good. Thats all the explanation you need.

If for whatever weird reason you dont like them, then you dont like them and thats it. You are not expected to like every acclaimed movie ever.

Why should anyone explain to you why they regard the movies the way they do?
You've watched them, you made up your own mind about them for now (or for good) and that's it.
There's no actual room for discussion about what is ultimately a matter of taste.
Not everything ever needs to be a "Change my mind" situation or something to that effect.
People do like/dislike different things for different reasons.

you have capeshit brain

Aside from excelling at all the fundamentals of movie-making: cinematography, screenplay, acting, costume design, CGI, score, etc.? To me, it's a very human and universal story about friendship, loyalty, honor, bravery, and sacrifice, and bringing out the best in humanity in the worst of times. No different than people's love for superhero movies, but these characters have no superpowers (except Gandalf).

Po-ta-toes

I watched the trilogy's theatrical editions years ago and liked but didn't love them. I wanted to get more into it, so I read the books to have a deeper understanding of the story and watched the extended editions of the films.

The main villain not being a real character is a common criticism from fans. I think it helps to think of the Ring as Sauron and not just the big eye. Every time the Ring tempts someone like Boromir or Frodo or Gollum, that's a villainous act on the part of Sauron. It essentially tortures Frodo by the third film. This doesn't make Sauron a complex or interesting villain but makes him more of a threat to our heroes than just an eye that sends out waves of bad guys. The prequel show that just ended its first season on Amazon Prime, The Rings of Power, shows more of Sauron the character, but most fans seem to dislike the show overall so it might not be worth your time if you don't care much for the movies.

I don't agree that the action scenes dragged. The balance of power in every battle is constantly shifting, the characters are moving around and having to try new things to win or escape, and one-on-one fights rarely last more than a minute. However, I can see how the thirty minute battles are tedious and not exciting if you don't care about the characters or stakes. The scenes with the Ents dragged on purpose as a joke but even fans I know get really sick of those scenes before they're over.

Harry Potter is a contemporary series to the Lord of the Rings (their first films premiered within a month of each other!) and both are the most well-realized living fantasy worlds ever in a movie, so that is a fair comparison. Harry Potter is all about the characters and their personalities bouncing off each other. In The Lord of the Rings, if characters are mad at each other we worry because the greater conflict may not get resolved. In Harry Potter, if the characters are mad at each other even over petty things I worry because I like them and want them all to get along. The only strong character relationships I feel in Lord of the Rings are Faramir trying to please his asshole father, Sam being the best friend in movie history to Frodo, and Bilbo and Gandalf at the start of the first film. Stuff like Arwen and Aragorn's romance and Merry and Eowyn's romance friendship is okay, too.

This is because characters in the Lord of the Rings often are representatives of their entire culture more than they are characters on their own. I didn't mention Gimli and Legolas before even though they have fun banter because they're really just "a dwarf" and "an elf," but the story is about those groups overcoming their differences to stop evil. The equivalent in Harry Potter would be muggles becoming aware of wizards and uniting against a threat. I think this is also why Aragorn is a Numenorean, someone with distant elf ancestry (I think? Help me out LOTR lore nerds.) who can bridge the gaps between them by becoming king of men and technically prince of elves I think (nerds, help me). Even the world itself that they are fighting for joins their side (the Ents). And I think it's really inspiring that the people who unite all these races are four young men from a hick town where everyone parties, drinks, sings, dances, and smokes all day. If Harry Potter is about a regular boy accepting his destiny and becoming the hero he was always meant to be, The Lord of the Rings is about regular people with no destiny and no responsibility becoming heroes anyway, simply because it's the right thing to do.

I also know a lot of fans like all the compassionate, openly emotional relationships between men in the films. They hug, cry, talk about their feelings, and the only man who is concerned about how others perceive him is Gimli, who is laughing at himself by the second film. Compare to the kids in Harry Potter, Han and Leia in the first two Star Wars, or especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe where everyone is so goddamn sensitive about what others think of them.

But to be honest, that's not why I love the movies. I love them because of the production design. The hair and makeup, the costumes, the locations, the sets, the miniatures, the cgi (great for the time, mostly holds up okay), the sheer number of extras in most scenes, the way every shot in the first film looks straight out of a story book before the sequels become gritty war films, the design of every piece of architecture and armor and weapon. I think it's the most immersive impossible world in any movie except maybe the original Star Wars movies. It's just impressive to me, even if I don't really get invested in the story much myself.

I'm sorry you didn't care for it but I hope I explained why I and so many others do as well. Personally, I recommend seeing it again some time with friends in marathon format. That's the best way to experience these. I put on the extended edition of Fellowship as comfort viewing but there's nothing better than shouting all the best lines together or playing drinking games like taking a shot whenever Frodo falls down (you will die).

These posts are getting out of hand, cinema is subjective yes but you still know what is great movie even if its not your style...LORT is literally the best trilogy ever made.

And what you retire from there is" sauron is not scary enough"...like wtf!!!

Cinematogrophy, sound, great roles from the actors, story, edition, visuals( Peter Jackson really build a world to this...not like the shitty false effects we have today on Marvel movies), i could go on and on...the movies are almost flawed

Did you watch the extended versions?

Yeah, when I saw them in the theater I really didn’t like them at all. During the pandemic my family watched the entire trilogy twice and I enjoyed watching them, but didn’t think they were very good. Like, the experience of cuddling with my family for a movie marathon was fun even though the movies were just okay.

The production quality of LOTR was pretty good, but I'm with you that I felt it was a little meh for me.

Mostly, I felt they were really slow. Like, there are long shots where characters are just looking at each other. I was fine with that in the first 3 hour movie, but by the end of the trilogy I felt like screaming "WE GET IT! KEEP THIS THING MOVING PLEASE!"

Yeah, it's all fandom pandering and production values.

It's not world-build to tell a story, it's a story to show off world building using null characters and a goofy-serious tone throughought.

You're not alone, you just weren't converted early.

I think the reason people love it is because it was a high-production-value adaptation that really respected the books.

If, like me, you don't care about the books and prefer a good 100min action film, these aren't for you. That is okay.

I found them boring and every time I've tried watching them I fell asleep. On the other hand I fell asleep during batman several times.

There are plenty of super slow paced movies I have not fallen a sleep in.

No one is obligated to like a movie. Different strokes for different folks.

I thought the same after watching all 3 during lockdown. Maybe they're one of them movies that take a few watches to truly appreciate