The "Lord of the Rings" is not a character driven book and the same goes wirh the film adaptations. It is plot driven with heavy focus on world building, which can either make it an amazing or a boring experience. Depending on your preferences.

Based on the list of your favourite films (excellent, BTW, some of my own favourites are there) you seem to prefer character driven ones. So I can easily understand why you find the LOTR films boring.

The only people I've ever met who share this opinion are people who've spent their entire life viewing things that are fast-paced action movies or movies where characters are defined entirely by a handful of quippy one-liners and a melodramatic flash back and then have all of their character development confined to a singular moment of epiphany. Movies where they would be alphabet level predictable if they didn't move onto the next hackneyed trope at whiplash inducing paces.

If you spend your entire life watching the cinematic equivalent of cocaine of course sobriety is going to be boring.

Never felt compelled to see the movies, but the books were some of the most pompous, boring things I ever read. Multiple pages of battle songs, crap like that? I read the entire trilogy and The Hobbit, waiting to get to the "good part", for it to click in. But it never did.

I think the problem is you're not watching the extended versions... All in one showing... Without bathroom breaks... Like a normal person...

You should be grateful, what I remember from the books is something like "and they rode and rode and rode and rode and rode again and kept riding and rode and rode".

OP, did you read the books? By today's standards, they may be a tad boring, but these were the books that created the clichhés in the first place. The movies were pretty decent for their time (although RotK was waaaayyyyy too long), but I did not feel that the books were done much justice. And there was too much 'humorous' dialougue shoehorned in. The Legolas-Gimli-Bromance was hard to watch, even then. That in and of itself makes the movies overrated.

Also, as for 'there are no surprises', the story of the movies differed from the books. LotR fans were unpleasantly surprised by that.

Off-topic: the Hobbit movies were abonimations. I fucking hate them.

For me it's the pacing. The movies are like 11 hours long, and 8 of those hours is just reaction shots of Sam and Frodo gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.

Seriously, you could shave a few seconds off of every shot and lose nothing. It's just how Peter Jackson directs. His King Kong was the same way. You're supposed to use long reaction shots to let important moments sink in, but he does it after every line.

The music was great. I'll give it that.

Tolkien stans burn me out so much. I'm fed up with them only slightly more than the faux dominion over fantasy that everyone else gives to Tolkien himself.

LotR trilogy is an adaptation of an already classic tale, specifically stylized after legends and folk stories. It's seeming naivity and lack of newer approaches is intentional and suggested by it's source material. It is a compelling journey into the Middle-Earth, where said tone is complimented by thosands of competent people in it's production, together creating an extraordinary piece that can hardly be reproduced anytime soon or matched in it's own league of fantasy-aligned stuff.

Favorite movies are: Memento, Reservoir Dogs, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Shining

While LotR wasn't shy of looking older (to buy some ale, eh?), every one of your favorite movie is characterised by explicit use of newest post-modern tropes or approaches.

RD is Tarantino's first mixtape of what he liked in movies with some layers of abstraction and purely staged interactions, The Shining is a theme park of moments where Stanley can go full Kubrik, Memento is an intentional Nolan's sabotage of a plot structure to create a new experience, and EEAaO is an impressive patchwork of gags, drama and trope reversals fit so tightly in it I thought I'm scrolling bits on tiktok. All ace at something they are meant to.

It's not to say that one is easily better than the other, but they are hardly comparable because they don't strive to do the same thing, and if you are into movies that play with your expectations and try hard to keep your engaged and puzzled, you'd obviously have a hard time with movies that paint their own picture for you to observe and vibe with.

That's, like, your taste, lemming.

I share the same unpopular opinion.

I enjoyed the animated LotR movie, but not the "live action" ones.

They are too slow, too much fighting (especially in the last one).

As someone who had a LOTR wedding theme, take your upvote and get the fuck out of here.

I thought the films were long and sometimes boring, but the books are something else. I gave up near the end, the part with the big spider.

My family watches it every year

-the dialog is pretty iconic

-story is simple, it's fine though

-the characters are pretty simple, but they are still interesting in their own way imo

-the ending to return of the king does undeniably drag

Honestly I think it's a pretty polarizing film series. It takes some huge gambles in including a lot of pretty deep lore and details that most people probably don't care about. Most people i know who've seen it say they either love it or found it boring. I've never met someone who said the series is "pretty good".

I will say, the lack of reliance on plot twists makes it more rewatchable. That and the absolutely beautiful sets and costumes. In today's age of CGI and now AI, we will never see the like of it again. EDIT: How could I forget the soundtrack?

I was in a dark place when those films came out. They kept me going for a number of years. It's full of manly men in touch with their feelings who care for and fight for others. But they were also ordinary people who kept going despite being overwhelmed by despair. We should be so lucky to have such influences in our lives. Might have to give them a rewatch again soon.

Rewatches movies

Complains there's no surprises

I spent my teenage years reading, playing DnD and overall just being a huge dork. I was gifted the movies a few times by relatives who didn't know I found the movies boring as hell.

I’m all for valid criticisms, but mediocre dialogue and one-dimensional characters? And your fave movies are Momento and Reservoir Dogs? The math ain’t mathing.

Like what you like, but I call bullshit. Logging this under “I said some controversial shit to stir up online discourse.” Enjoy my downvote, sir.

I agree that a story so iconic that spawned endless imitations in the last 70 years might feel a little clichè...

About the dialogue, what did you expect? Frodo and Sam talking about the real meaning of Like a Virgin while climbing mt. Doom? Of course it is plain, the script isn't triyng to present something unexpected like a Tarantino movie, it's all about each character's lore and world building and the dialogue serves this purpose very well

Agreed.

The books are even worse, every other page is a fucking song or extended poem.

Most over rated shit I never finished.

Yeah they were way too emotional in the movie. I much prefer the seriousness of the book where they acted like mature adults. And Gandalf was more badass in the books, and Gimli wasn't just comic relief in the books. But the visuals were amazing in the movie. 10/10 for visuals.

You might think this is an unpopular opinion, but for many it is a reality, I don't know anyone in real life that liked the movies for example (my sister loved HP and Twilight but fell asleep with The Fellowship of The Ring).

Here in Lemmy is definitely an unpopular opinion.

OMG thank you, I hate them and get so vilified for it. I might have deemed them mediocre had each one been at least half an hour shorter but as it is they’re just a Peter Jackson wankathon.

Full disclosure fwiw:

• I’m generally not into fantasy
• I (almost but not quite) equally hate action films / sequences
• More of a hard sci-fi fan, though I’ll generally enjoy anything harder than Star Wars (also hate)

Dude I just had this same experience recently. Hadn't seen them in at least a decade or more. They are not aging well. I know they are older tech but I even feel like the cinematography and special effects are pretty rough around the edges. And i love watching old movies. I love LOTR but yeah probably not gonna watch those again.