Star Wars prequels “win” for worse. Oh my sweet lord. Should never have been made. Collectively we should agree to never speak of them again. They’re an affront to the other movies.
They didn’t turn Yoda into a superball on the end of a glowstick either.
My issue w/ The Hobbit was how the CGI called far too much attention to itself, and thus took me completely out of the movie. I was hoping for more naturalistic exterior shoots, but from what I understand they were very far and few between.
I like the Hobbit movies. 
I’m still stuck on why you think the Lord of the Rings movies were ‘surprisingly’ successful adaptations. Did you think, boy, those are going to bomb BIG? and were surprised they were success? (though I shouldn’t wonder, considering all the millions thrown away on SW prequels and the Hobbit, but the LotR I think couldn’t have not been a success.)
Why “version?” ANYTHING with Paul Frees is better than anything without him, whether or not they have any elements in common.
Thus, Rocky and Bullwinkle > Gone With the Wind.
Salingmind-for decades LOTR was considered unfilmable. The cartoon versions were not encouraging. When a little-known horror director from New Zealand was finally given the backing to try to make the films, no one had any certainty he could do it. Much less that they would be critical & popular successes. As a book lover I was one of the skeptics . Until I saw middle earth on the screen.
The Hobbit was worse for me. Now, I know artistically the SW prequels are objectively… not good… but I really like them. I own them. Rewatch them. They’re good popcorn fun that I can turn my brain off for and just enjoy them as they were intended to be.
But The Hobbit makes me angry. Part of it is that it’s a terrible adaptation. I’m not a purist, but it was my favorite Middle Earth book and I was so excited that Jackson would finally give it the movie it deserved (ie not that shitty cartoon). But ok, even if it was faithfully adapted, it was so long and so boring and just so overwrought.
I’d rather watch whiny Anakin pod race than a bunch of annoying dwarves I still can’t tell apart do whatever the fuck they did on the river with Legolas. LEGOLAS. argh.
It’s boring, the characters make you want to punch them all, you can’t figure out what’s going on, it’s slow, it’s dark in color, the effects aren’t that good, the acting isn’t that good. I don’t even know why I watched them. And thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure I saw the 3rd one or if I blocked it out in rage. I don’t even think editing would fix it, but some minor tweaks could make the SW prequels a lot better.
I grew up on that shitty cartoon. I’ve probably seen that more than any other movie ever. I wore out 2 Betamax versions of it. And while that shitty cartoon truncated a lot of the book, I think i preferred that to the vastly bloated new versions.
Oh, and that shitty cartoon is BILLIONS of times better than those other shitty carto…I mean Jar Wars.
I didn’t watch the cartoon until I was older. Maybe that makes a difference?
Star Wars prequels. I’d rather stick a knife in my head than watch those again.
I think the Hobbit movies were worse.
The Star Wars prequels had myriad flaws, but they were more or less space romp action popcorn flicks. And the action in them was okay, and sometimes better than okay. The dialogue was awful; the comic relief was maddening; the romance was cringeworthy. But the bulk of the films were action, and the action was largely competent.
The Hobbit movies were allegedly trying to tell a story. The story got watered down by too much action - and the action wasn’t very good! It was tedious. The shoe-horned-in romance wasn’t as bad as the romance in the Star Wars prequels, but it wasn’t good. And everything about Radagast was embarrassingly awful.
Basically, the Star Wars prequels at least work on the level of “stupid mindless action boom-boom slash-slash” fun. The Hobbit films fail at even that.
They’re both so bad. Sorry, Star Wars prequels horribly bad, far worse than the Hobbit movies. I could watch the Hobbit movies again if I was forced to at gunpoint, but I have started carrying cyanide pills with me just in case someone attempts to force me to watch the Star Wars prequels again at gunpoint.
ETA: In case I wasn’t clear about it, the Star Wars prequels sucked. Really really sucked. They should have opened with a title sequence saying “In a galaxy far far away from Star Wars…”.
Seems to me a lot of you here are masochists, who take pleasure in recounting the fact that you put yourselves through the ordeal of watching these six (six!) long, bad movies - I mean, really, why would anyone uninterested in a disappointing experience watch any (much less all) of them?
I have to vote the Star Wars prequels too. They had me doubting if my love of the originals was even justified. The Hobbit(s) just made me think, “@$#& you, Peter Jackson!”
Yeah, it did. So then I just went and watched Dead Alive and Bad Taste again and I’m cool with him again.
Group therapy?
Bilbo Baggins was a better character than anyone in the first three Star Wars prequels. In fact, the Hobbit movies would be downright enjoyable if we didn’t have the book to compare it to.
It’s no contest for me. Phantom Menace has the worst production cost to quality ratio of any movie ever made.
Legolas didn’t have a girlfriend, dammit.*
You can make crap up for the Star Wars prequels (such as midichlorians) because there’s no pre-existing canon saying you can’t.
When it comes to The Hobbit, you DON’T make up crap that wasn’t in the book(s). Azog has been dead since 31 years before Bilbo Baggins was born.
Is that a more heinous crime than the creation of Jar Jar Binks? Beats the fuck out of me.
*and even if he did, there’s no fucking way she took a shine to one of Thorin’s party. :dubious:
How do you know they are going to be disappointing until you watch them?
As some people have said, the Star Wars prequels got somewhat better as they went along, with the first one being the most abysmal.
I watched the third Hobbit movie more out of a sense of wanting to see the series through to the end rather than a real interest in seeing it. It was like staying to the end of the ninth inning when your team is losing 15-2.