Fans Reveal Their Biggest 'Lord of the Rings' Hot Takes

From Redditor u/SophisticatedGoat:

High-budget live-action series are great and all, but a quality animated series allows you to show anything you want without having to worry about special effects.

From Redditor u/TheOriginalOperator:

Think about it, in LOTR Sauron is never seen in combat or in planning. He can see his foes sometimes, has an army, and yet despite having overwhelming advantages in number and observation gets bamboozled by Hobbits and a force of Elves, Men, a Dwarf and a Maia that he should have completely outstripped. And we have ZERO idea what could possibly motivate him as he never has a real presence.

In the Silmarillion he’s actively involved in a great many battles, shows impressive magical prowess and cunning through these conflicts, was all but stated to be better versed in Songcraft than the Valar’s mightiest member, has an interesting motivation that still makes him dangerous, and managed to topple the greatest empire of Men while at a COMPLETE disadvantage.

From Redditor u/Batman1436:

It is just the Hobbits. The four simple Hobbits (as seen by everyone else in the world) go back home and they are changed completely. There isn't much in the story to show progression of these four characters until they arrive at the Shire. There were instances; yes, where Merry or Pippin, having gone through their tasks, grew, but not as much when Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo go back to the Shire and are compared with the other Hobbits. 

From a former Redditor:

I like the 1977 cartoon version of Smaug is better than the Peter Jackson one.

From Redditor u/Anasazi_Fozzy:

The Valar and Maiar are absolutely useless and the cause of most of Middle-earth's problems. Their actions directly lead to Melkor ruling and corrupting Middle-earth, and they basically do jack sh*t to handle it unless they can get off their lazy a**es. Maybe Ulmo is alright among them because he actually tries to help, but yeah. Also Aule is the worst; not one but two of his disciples (Sauron and Saruman) completely lost the script, and he went and created dwarves outside of Eru's plan, which caused their own amount of grief.

The Maiar that we know are pretty shitty. Like most of them are Balrogs or Sauron, and the five wizards of the third age are mostly useless or an active detriment. The only useful one was Gandalf, and even he took literal centuries to get his sh*t together, and Frodo would have been toast if he had waited for Gandalf as planned in Fellowship.

Before anyone tries to say it, yes I get that their actions/inactions are crucial to the story and world building, and I don't slight the actual writing and story telling skills of Tolkien. After all if they had not made the actions they did, then we would not have the excellent story we have. Not very fun to read a book that is 5 pages about how all powerful Gods beat the shit out of Melkor as soon as he turned evil and everything was fine. I'm just saying with-in universe it's pretty obvious that the angelic beings don't really have a lock on anything, or a huge stake in the outcome of Middle-earth.

From Redditor u/bubbiemoms:

Eowyn was HORRIBLY cast in the Peter Jackson films. Just awful.