Not to mention Roleplaying games, becuase D&D had many roots in LotR.
Tolkien published three Middle-earth works during his lifetime: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, besides a little non-Middle-earth fantasy fiction. (Not counting his in-depth annotations on Galadriel’s song “Namárië” in the form of an essay, published in The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle.)
The Silmarillion was compiled by Christopher Tolkien, who didn’t stop there. Christopher has kept on editing and publishing his father’s unpublished Middle-earth manuscripts ever since. There’s Unfinished Tales, the 12-volume History of Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin, and what-all. For those who really want to dig deep, Christopher has populated a whole library shelf out of the writings his dad left.
If that’s your barometer, then I suppose you might be on target.
But just look at what LotR has done: nearly every single fantasy book, movie, RPG and video game owes directly to LotR. It single-handedly defined a genre’s substance and style. “Orcs” are from LotR. Dungeons & Dragons wouldn’t exist without LotR. EverQuest and World of Warcraft wouldn’t exist without LotR. MOBA games like League of Legends, DOTA 2, etc. are directly descended from LotR.
And fans of those things know what the source was. LotR, IIRC, is 2nd only to the Bible with more than 150,000,000 copies sold.
Unsurprisingly, the Hobbit is all the Tolkien I’ve ever been able to get through (and I read it in my 20s).
Yes, looks like you are right; the Hobbit is #6 as well.
The Hobbit is a fairy tale, written to entertain children.
Lord of the Rings is an adventure story, written to entertain adults.
The Silmarillion is written to entertain ivory-tower academics.
(Don’t get me wrong. I love The Silmarillion. But it takes an effort to get through the first couple of readings.)
And, The Silmarillion really isn’t a story – it’s somewhere between a history book about a fantasy realm, and an anthology of semi-related stories. (I say this, as I’m about to embark on re-reading The Silmarillion for the sixth or seventh time. 
)
Overall, I agree with what’s been said already – Star Wars is more accessible to more people, and Lucas single-handledly redefined movie tie-in merchandising. But, even if many people don’t directly know Middle-Earth as well as they do Star Wars, Tolkien’s works really shaped the modern fantasy genre, and were a huge influence on a lot of things that followed.
In addition to the merchandise (or perhaps part of it?), it is easier to put yourself into the Star Wars universe (or Harry Potter). The vast majority of characters, including main characters, are humanoid. The main characters in LOTR are hobbits and while there are humans, humanish elves, and wizards, I think being able to picture oneself more easily as a Jedi has helped matters a lot when it comes to Star Wars.
I was actually going to post something similar. I think it’s because much of Middle Earth is heavily borrowed from Medieval European folklore, fashion, culture and military combined with the fact that it has influenced nearly every pre-industrial fantasy universe for the past 50+ years has made it almost ubiquitous. Like you would be hard pressed to find a fantasy story that didn’t have some version of “orcs”, “goblins”, “dragons”, “elves”, “dwarfs”, and associated anachronistic arms, armor and architecture.
In contrast, no one had seen anything like Star Wars when it came out. And much of the sci fi that has come out since is often viewed as an inferior imitator of Star Wars.
Only picture Jedi as human do you?
Just skimmed the thread and this is probably redundant, but I think the reasons are pretty clear.
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Barrier to entry - Star Wars was originally a 3 movie franchise that was tailored to teen/pre-teen audiences. It was basically crack cocaine to any grade-schooler with a passing interest in sci-fi/fantasy. The Hobbit and LotR were very long books written with a pretty sophisticated prose and a bunch of made-up languages. Not exactly catnip to those kids who viewed all reading as homework.
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Timing - The Hobbit was published in 1937. LotR in 1954. Star Wars came out in 1977-1984. Few people are still alive who remember the first run of the Hobbit. Gen Xers and Gen Yers who grew up on Star Wars are having kids now and spoon feeding them all the Star Wars stuff they can, mostly because they want an excuse to enjoy it themselves.
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Merch - Lucas and Star Wars basically invented cross-promotions and merchandising. Everything from toys, to games, to fast food cups, to cereals to clothing. Shit has been everywhere pretty much constantly since the 1980s. Middle Earth is great, and if you loved D&D you probably feel like it’s been a cultural pillar for a long time, but it’s always been very niche in comparison. Before Peter Jackson you really couldn’t find a T-shirt or a toy that directly referenced Tolkein’s works, in the 80s and 90s Middle Earth was totally overshadowed by D&D and a dozen other proprietary videogame worlds like Hyrule and Frobozz. Star Wars as a brand is basically Nike.
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Relevance - this one is probably a little fuzzier, but part of what made Star Wars so important is the Space Race and Computers. Both are so integral to the last few generations, every kid at some point wanted to be an astronaut. Not many wanted to ride horses and swing swords. The tech at the center of Star Wars looks like a not-do-distance reality to a lot of kids. Middle Earth, looks like a step backwards in time, a concept that’s always more appealing to older generations.
That’s… really, really easy to do. Just as a starting point, take a look at this list of fifty fantasy-themed television shows. The only really Tolkien-esque fantasy shows on there are Game of Thrones, The Witcher, and Matt Groening’s Disenchanted. Everything else is urban and/or horror fantasy.
Star Wars was consciously created as a pastiche of the Buck Rogers serials George Lucas grew up on. He brought an unparalleled technical sophistication to it, but the heavy nostalgia hook was a big part of its initial marketing and critical buzz. And even as far as f/x goes, 2001 had already shown what was possible with the new state-of-the-art effects.
In fact, Lucas’s original idea was to do an adaptation/update of the Flash Gordon serials, but when he wasn’t able to get the rights to it, he created his own milieu.
But, if Lucas’s primary inspirations had been the sci-fi serials (along with splashes of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as The Searchers and Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress), Tolkien’s primary inspirations included various mythologies (particularly Norse and German), epic poetry such as Beowulf, and Catholic theology. It’s the difference between a filmmaker and a professor of language and literature.
1(a). Time investment - Star Wars movies require just 2-2.5 hours to watch each of them; the whole series including the Han Solo movie can be viewed in under 24 hours. All that is required is to sit still and look at the screen.
LotR, OTOH, is a huge undertaking, even for people who like to read. It requires an active effort to read each of the 481,103 words (plus The Hobbit’s 95,356 words) and for many, many people that’s a daunting task.
Even watching the LotR movies is a much bigger task than watching the Star Wars movies. The 3 films as released theatrically are almost 10 hours long; the extended cuts are almost 11.5 hours long. Add another 3 hours for The Hobbit and you’re at 14.5 hours for just 4 films, vs. 22.5 hours for 10 Star Wars movies.
:smack: I meant Flash Gordon, not Buck Rodgers.
3 hours for The Hobbit? Try nearly 8. There were three Hobbit films – An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies – which clocked in at 2:49, 2:41, and 2:24 in their theatrical releases.
(One factor in my dislike of the *Hobbit *films was just how much additional material – beyond both what was in the original book, as well as in Tolkien’s related writings – was created in order to pad it out to get to three films.)
Simple.
LOTR was a book franchise.
SW was a movie franchise.
More people go to the movies than read books.
LOTR was a very successful book series, but fewer people have read it than the number of people who have seen Star Wars. By the time the LOTR movie came out, SW had been a well merchandised phenomenon for almost a quarter of a century.
Star Wars is movies. Lord of the Rings is books. Yeah, there are LotR movies, but they’re Lord of the Rings in the same way that Alan Dean Foster’s books are Star Wars. And books and movies have always impacted culture in different ways: Not necessarily greater or lesser, but different.
:smack:
I forgot about the last 2. I thought The Hobbit was horrible and stopped paying attention. Thank you for correcting my error.
Admittedly, after seeing Desolation of Smaug in the theater, I was so disappointed with how one of my favorite stories had been bastardized for the screen, that I have still never seen Battle of the Five Armies. 