Middle-earth: ranking Peter Jackson's films in quality order

My list;

1. Fellowship of the Ring
tie 2 & 3. The Return of the King & The Two Towers
(All the LOTR films are 10/10 imo. And I prefer the Extended Editions.)

4. The Desolation of Smaug 8/10 (I'm still deciding whether to skip Kili flirting with Tauriel. So, my rating/order could change. But the Extended Edition sometimes did improve this film.)
5. An Unexpected Journey 8/10 (it's lower primarily because of the Radagast poop hair character, the rock giant amusement park ride and the troll snot/poop jokes all of which I skip).
6. The Battle of the Five Armies 7/10 (is last because the story was very stretched out and due to the Tauriel/Kili romance which I skip).

BB ;-)

it is just in my opinion - imo - 🌈

Rating with the Extended set for LotR:
1. Return disk 2
2. TTT disk 2
3,4. Fellowship 1 and 2
5. Return disk 1
6. TTT disk 1





7. Unexpected
8. Smaug
9. 5 Armies

My list;

1. Fellowship of the Ring
tie 2 & 3. The Return of the King & The Two Towers
(All the LOTR films are 10/10 imo. And I prefer the Extended Editions.)

4. The Desolation of Smaug 8/10 (I'm still deciding whether to skip Kili flirting with Tauriel. So, my rating/order could change. But the Extended Edition sometimes did improve this film.)
5. An Unexpected Journey 8/10 (it's lower primarily because of the Radagast poop hair character, the rock giant amusement park ride and the troll snot/poop jokes all of which I skip).
6. The Battle of the Five Armies 7/10 (is last because the story was very stretched out and due to the Tauriel/Kili romance which I skip).

BB ;-)
If you feel compelled to skip parts of a movie... then you cannot justify a ranking of 7 or above. 7-8 are high rankings.

7 is average, at least for me.

to Karl; I think you are right. The Hobbit movies have not aged well for me while the LOTR Rings films remain rock solid.

My current Hobbit film rankings.
DOS 7/10
AUJ 7/10
BotFA 6/10

- If I continue to avoid these films, then eventually my rankings for them will continue to slide.

A related example would be 3 movies which used to have higher ratings by me and now are;
The Phantom Menace 4/10
Attack of the Clones 5/10
Revenge of the Sith 5/10

Give it time, though I don't think the Hobbit movies will slip quite as far as the Star Wars prequels.

BB ;-)

it is just in my opinion - imo - 🌈

BB:

I loathed, loathed, loathed the scene in "Battle of Five Armies" where Legolas runs across the collapsing bridge.

However, it still lacks the "rips a hole in time and space with its awfulness" factor that comes with the "It's only because I'm so in love with you" scene in "Revenge of the Sith." I think that the cinematographer had to shoot around the paint peeling off of the sets during the dialogue on that one.

Look- it's trying to think!

Hi CTS; here we are, two of the few participants of the Ringnut community who still post comments on this Board.
And an underwhelming trilogy of movies can do that, break apart the enthusiasm of a group of fans.

Now to "Revenge of the Sith" and "Battle of the Five Armies";
* In a way they both share the same basic flaw; a lack of a decent story covered up by massive amounts of CGI action.
- With Lucas on his own (without all the helpers/collaborators he had pre 1990) the man cannot write a decent script.
Result; a massive CGI battle scene whose only purpose is to locate General Grievous.
- With "Battle of the Five Armies", Warner Brothers in a cash grab forced Peter Jackson and Co at the last minute to make 3 Hobbit movies instead of two. Warners got an extra $900 million in box office.
But the story of BotFA is very stretched filled in with repetitive, over extended CGI battle scenes.

"I loathed, loathed, loathed the scene in "Battle of Five Armies" where Legolas runs across the collapsing bridge.'

Yes, lots of us have our most cringeworthy moment for BotFA.
Mine is the Tauriel character in that film. The 600 year old Elf who has completely fallen in love with a Dwarf (violating Tolkien's myth) and at the end becomes a blubbering mess.
- In DOS Tauriel was the most wise character in the Woodland Realm and a woman of action.
She knew that the Elves needed to push on to the outer world to help the Free Peoples in that area fight the Orcs.
In DOS she left to do that. She told this to Legolas.
- She is also a Silvan Elf. While the royal family are Sindarin Elves. And Thranduil is prejudiced against her just because of that.
Legolas loves her. The story writes itself imo. She accepts his love in defiance of the prejudiced father. Classic romance writing.
- In BotFA Tauriel has given up her wisdom, the love of Legolas and her quest.
She is one of the kinds of sappy love at first sight romance characters. (I actually like many decent dramatized romance stories but not this one or the romance in the Star Wars prequels.)
- And on top of that, there is a sexual love bond between an Elf and a Dwarf.
That never happened in the entire Tolkien mythology! And he explained in detail why the Dwarves and the Elves were always a people at their core divided from the beginning.
The rare exception is Legolas and Gimli as friends but they were not having a sexual relationship!

"However, it still lacks the "rips a hole in time and space with its awfulness" factor that comes with the "It's only because I'm so in love with you" scene in "Revenge of the Sith."

Yes, that is awful writing.
But for a 600 year old Elf to be saying this is just about as bad;
Tauriel: If this is love, I do not want it. Take it away, please! Why does it hurt so much?
Thranduil: Because it was real
** I swear I wanted these Hobbit movies to be good. Really.
But BotFA is like a slow poison in the back of my mind and by extension it has spoiled a lot of DOS.

* After this chat, I think my final ratings for the Hobbit movies will be;
AUJ 7/10 (watchable someday with only Radagast's poop hair to be skipped).
DOS 6/10 (Pretty much only the beginning is watchable until Tauriel and Kili begin their nonsense love affair.)
BotFA 5/10 To be skipped all together (except for the killing of Smaug?) with only my memories of the huge effort by all involved left.

BB ;-)

it is just in my opinion - imo - 🌈

There are so many facets of "cringeworthy."

While I completely respect your loathing of Tauriel-Kili in DOS, I am still drawn to that Mario Brothers-esque barrel scene in the river as the moment when the Hobbit films jumped the shark. I could almost see that scene and the tie-in video game being mapped at the same time.


Look- it's trying to think!