🎥 All 10 LOTR and Hobbit Films Ranked
From 1977's 'The Hobbit' through the Peter Jackson films and including 'The War of the Rohirrim'
Mae govannen, friends!
This past December, the release of The War of the Rohirrim brought the total number of major motion pictures based on either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings to a nice even total of 10 films.
So what better way to start of this year than to rank them all?
The following is, of course, simply my opinion on the matter. But it’s the correct opinion (…in my opinion).
My criteria for this ranking is as follows:
Quality as films—are these films actually good movies? Are they enjoyable? Exciting? Well-made?
Quality as adaptations—how do they do bringing the world of Middle-earth and the stories they’re based on to life? Do they make too many compromises or sacrifices, or do they manage to translate the letter and the spirit of the tale from page to screen effectively?
Personal enjoyment—a tweet I enjoyed recently claimed there are only 4 movie ratings: 1) good, liked it 2) good, didn't like it 3) bad, didn't like it 4) bad, liked it. This category is the “liked it/didn’t like it” aspect of a ranking.
Nostalgia—perhaps more a factor influencing personal enjoyment more than its own separate criteria, nostalgia is nonetheless a powerful force and I make no pretense of being immune to it. There are several of these films that I saw at an impressionable age and that honestly might not rank as high if I had only just recently seen them.
I won’t go into depth on each factor for each movie, but just know these are the main criteria I was considering in each movie as I ranked them.
Feel free to disagree with me about my choices in the comments! OR to praise how correct my judgements are: all are welcome haha
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All 10 The Lord of the Rings Films Ranked
10. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Earlier this year I revisited The Hobbit films, in part because I had never seen the final entry in that trilogy: The Battle of the Five Armies. It couldn’t be as bad as I had feared (and as all the reviews from critics and friends proclaimed), could it?
Reader, it could and it was.
Don’t get me wrong: there were a few highlights. Like the eagles airdropping Beorn into the final battle in an airBeorn Bearatrooper assault.
But this movie is mostly just a giant mess. It manages to make Smaug attacking Lake-town boring, gives Legolas and Tauriel a needless and nonsensical reconnaissance mission that accomplishes nothing, sends Thorin, Fili, Kili, and Dwalin away from the titular battle to confront Azog and Bolg and then…just doesn’t really show the rest of the battle?
Most damning of all? I felt almost nothing when Bilbo says, “The Eagles are coming!” A Eucatastrophe that produces no joy, no thrill…well, how much more needs to be said?
Hopefully there are no future films that reach the lows this film provides… *glares at The Hunt for Gollum (2026)*
9. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
There are actually portions of this film that I do enjoy. Bilbo and Smaug’s encounter in the depths of the Lonely Mountain, for instance, is excellent despite the changes the movie makes to the scene.
But this is the film that made me give up on the trilogy and the reason that it took me a decade to even see The Battle of the Five Armies. There’s too little of what actually happens in the book that makes it to the screen and too much added or changed material. Just one example: by deciding to save Smaug’s attack on Lake-town for the third movie, they needed a climax for this film. So the Dwarves end up inside the mountain with Bilbo while Smaug is still there, leading to a chase sequence that ends with them attempting to kill him with molten gold (?). It’s an unnecessary and just awful scene born out of the decision to make three films.
You might not agree with the film being this low on the list, but I can’t shake the sense of frustration and disappointment that I felt walking out of the theater with this one. I didn’t like it, it’s not faithful to the book, it’s not a great film, and I have zero nostalgia for it. Revisiting it recently did not improve my opinion of it much.
8. The Return of the King (1980)
Rankin/Bass studio made this film as as a sequel to their The Hobbit animated movie, and that single choice should immediately tell you that this probably isn’t going to be a very good version of this story. There’s simply too much that happens in the rest of The Lord of the Rings to start with the events of Return of the King and expect to be able to succeed.
The film spends the majority of its time focusing on Frodo and Sam’s journey from Cirith Ungol to Mount Doom. It does manage to do a fair job adapting this portion of the story. Unfortunately, their journey in isolation isn’t quite the sort of thing that can effectively support a whole movie. And furthermore, by focusing on Frodo and Sam, compromises have to be made. Gimli and Legolas? Cut. Faramir? Gone. Aragorn? Doesn’t appear until he shows up with the Corsair fleet with a few minutes left in the movie.
I’ll say this about it, though: “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way” is a banger!
“Evil cannot create anything new”? Explain THIS, Tolkien!
Good film? No. Good adaptation? Surprisingly faithful in some ways, but also makes some confounding choices. Do I like it? Yeah…though that’s likely in large part due to the nostalgia I have for it. So it sinks to 8 on the list.
7. The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings is a curiosity. Grim and dark and yet whimsical and ridiculous at points, it combines traditional animation with rotoscoping and covers The Fellowship of the Ring plus some of the events of The Two Towers (everything up to Helm’s Deep and some of Gollum guiding Frodo and Sam towards Mordor). Though it only covers roughly half of the book, a Part 2 was never put into production and it remains an incomplete adaptation.
Some of the character designs and scenes are inspired: the Nazgûl are frightening and menacing, for instance. But others are strange: middle-management short-hair Elrond, Viking Boromir, bumbling/dopey Sam Gamgee, etc.
Its influence is felt in several places in Peter Jackson’s films, such as the scene of the hobbits hiding from the Nazgûl.
While it was influential and did a fair job with what it attempted to accomplish, the novel animation style, inconsistent quality, and lack of a concluding chapter mean it can’t rise any higher than this in our rankings.
6. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
I found The War of the Rohirrim to be a fine adaptation overall. I enjoyed many aspects of it and did not find anything offensive, confusing, or really even subpar about it (in contrast with all the films to this point in the rankings).
It told a complete, self-contained tale. I enjoyed almost all of the additions and embellishments to the story that they made (inevitable when you base a whole movie on just a few pages of source material) and though I found the portions of the animation where they tried to combine 2D animation and 3D graphics a tad distracting, appreciated the animated style overall.
You can read my more complete thoughts from last month here:
But while I enjoyed most of the film, I also didn’t find myself drawn into the story, inspired, or otherwise really moved. Not the worst criticism, but also an obstacle to ranking higher on this list.
5. The Hobbit (1977)
This is where it all began for me: a worn copy of this VHS at my grandparents’ house that introduced me to a wonderful world full of wizards, hobbits, dragons, adventure, songs, excitement, and joy.
Perhaps it being so (relatively) high on this list for me is due to nostalgia. My wife did not share the experience of growing up watching this version, so when I showed it to her a few years back she found it underwhelming compared to the live-action Lord of the Rings movies. In her words, it was “a bit wacky, kind of weird.”
But one person’s “wacky” is another person’s “endearing” and I fall squarely in the latter camp here. Yes the elves and Gollum are a bit…odd. And yeah, it has to cut some things for the sake of time (Beorn, for instance, is absent). But it covers most all of the events of the book in a single film, has a mostly solid voice cast, has some catchy tunes, and is heavy on the nostalgia factor for me, so it comes in at number 5 here.
4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
The clear highlight of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey manages at times to recapture the magic of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The good and great outweigh the bad or poor elements, but the warning signs of what to come are evident even in this first chapter.
Martin Freeman as Bilbo is simply inspired casting, Richard Armitage as Thorin is a highlight, the encounter with the Goblins and adaptation of “Riddles in the Dark” is excellent, and overall the grand adventure kicks off in appropriately grand fashion. It’s a shame that this was as good as this trilogy would get.
It’s a fine film, a fair—but not great—adaptation of the events it covers, and I liked it. Any nostalgia for it though is probably as much for a time before I had experienced the latter two Hobbit films in the series as for this film itself.
Note: each of the remaining three films are, in my opinion, S-tier. They’re head and shoulders above the others, and each grand achievements of filmmaking and adaptation. I completely understand if you put any of the three Lord of the Rings trilogy in any order at the top of this list. They’re simply excellent films and each has a strong argument for being the best on this list.
Alas, a three-way tie is just not satisfying, so though it may be folly, I’ve ranked them separately and not together.
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
Let’s start with the fact that Helm’s Deep is perhaps the greatest battle sequence put to film. Add to it that the film effectively expands upon the promise of the first film and sets the pieces for the concluding chapter while still remaining a highly compelling and entertaining story of its own (middle chapters of trilogies often struggle with this!), and you have plenty to elevate the film above all the others on this list.
But several missteps keep this from being an excellent adaptation of the source material. Remember how the 1980 Return of the King focused on Frodo and Sam’s journey…but that the portion of their journey from that part of the novel isn’t really all that exciting or epic? Well part of how Peter and Jackson attempted to solve was by moving the confrontation with Shelob into Return of the King. Boom! Automatically much more exciting of a storyline for them!
But now you have another problem. What do you do with Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers? Thus Movie Faramir was forced to struggle mightily against the temptation of the Ring in order to give Frodo and Sam something to do and the Osgiliath Detour was born. Book Faramir would never.
Screenwriter Philippa Boyens is quoted as saying that having Faramir resist the temptation of the Ring would have “stripped the Ring of all its power,” but they had no problem inventing a scene for Fellowship where Aragorn refuses Frodo’s free offer of the Ring to him, so I don’t really buy it.
Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked here, but this huge change and its effects on the rest of the film brings The Two Towers down in the “Quality as Adaptations” category and keeps it from topping the list.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Yes, ROTK won 11 academy awards. Yes, it is the best conclusion to a film trilogy ever (sorry, Return of the Jedi). Yes, if you have a heart even as small as the Grinch you’ll weep for the last half hour straight of the movie.
And yet…
There are simply some things about it that render me unable to put it at number one. They aren’t numerous, but they’re significant.
I get that from a pacing standpoint they felt pressure to wrap up the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, but having the Army of the Dead come with the Black Fleet and mop up the army of Mordor in 2 seconds like a videogame cheat code is still just too big a change for me from the books to accept or enjoy.
I also realize they needed to come up with something for Arwen to do during the movie, but having her suddenly and bizarrely beginning to die because her lifeforce was tied to the Ring (??) is simply laughable.
And Frodo sending Sam away? Get thee behind me, Satan!
Still, it’s an awe-inspiring and moving film that brought the greatest film trilogy of all time to a satisfying, epic conclusion. The charge of the Rohirrim and Éowyn’s “I am no man!” moment are pure cinema. And so there is only one film that is a greater Lord of the Rings movie…
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
A near perfect film that is a masterclass of an adaptation of the source material. Yes, I am Team Bombadil through and through…but I understand why he and many other elements were cut (as far as changes in adaptations go, I’m generally more sympathetic to cuts/streamlining/omissions, than alterations or original additions).
The film is epic in scale yet fully grounded in the world it establishes and in the characters within it. The journey from the Shire to Rivendell and through Moria to Lórien then down the Anduin has just the right balance of adventure and quieter, reflective moments. Characters like Gimli hadn’t devolved into pure comic relief yet and though Aragorn is made more hesitant than in the books, it’s a change that I think works for the sake of giving him a satisfying character arc in the films.
Jackson and company did something truly special with this one. It’s a masterful film, an excellent adaptation, a film I love, and has twenty years of nostalgia all rolled up into one film. And for those reasons, it’s my top Lord of the Rings or Hobbit film adaptation.
What do you think? What did I get right, and how would your ranking of these films differ?
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I’m pretty much in agreement… and the cartoon versions are simply a bit of lovely nostalgia… my kids were in grade school when I heard them singing while on our swing-set, “Where there’s a whip, there’s a way!” AND “Frodo of the Nine Fingers - and the ring of DOOOOM!” In their little kid fake baritone voices! Good memories!
I liked the two towers over the return of the king. Great list though!!