The Lord of the Rings trilogy is superior to the Hobbit trilogy! The Lord of the Rings movies were actually well-made, unlike The Hobbit! LOTR was directed by Peter Jackson to respect and honor one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The Hobbit was only made to make money, but it didn’t because the producers of the move got back what they put into it: nothing. LOTR movies made a gross total of two billion, eight-hundred ninety-seven million. The Hobbit only made a grand total of seven-hundred forty-five million. Still a lot but, nothing compared to two billion.

About every moment in The Hobbit was CGI. Ian McKellen (Gandalf) had a break down on set of The Hobbit because he was doing it all with a green screen. While in LOTR, they built whole cites and towns. Mordor, Hobbition, Rivendell, Rohan, and more.

Almost every scene was filmed in New Zealand. The crew and actors would take helicopters to tops of mountains to film (except for Sean Bean who hiked the whole way because of his fear of flying.) The actors would float down rivers in small boats they built specifically for the movie.

In fact, everything was made for the movie. Every prop in the trilogy (except for weaponry) was made from scratch. Each costume and makeup was customized for each character: extras, hobbits, elves, and orcs. Orcs in LOTR were not CGI, but in the hobbit they were all CGI, making them less life like and individual. In LOTR they didn’t even use CGI for the hobbits and dwarfs, which were around 4-5 feet high, they would simply hire scale doubles.

Everything was more genuine and real in LOTR. During the filming of the first movie, Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) broke his tooth, then during lunch that day got it fixed and continued filming. The directing and dialog was just better in general. While both were filmed by Peter Jackson, he did a much better job with LOTR. Each character had a back story, and actual charter arc. This made it so you cared about every character. When one would die, or have a loss, you would care and feel real emotions for them. Because they put more human effort in The Lord of the Rings than The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings is the better movie.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.