I don't see The Lord of the Rings as following in Star Wars footsteps too much except that they're both trilogies that use cutting-edge special effects.

Cinematically, The Lord of the Rings owes much more to Braveheart.

>Most will probably disagree, but the original SW trilogy gets too much praise. There is only one great movie in there, the 1st is simply good

I agree! I had a long article on r/TrueFilm about how the 1977 film is really not that great.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/t3ae2w/the_empire_strikes_back_at_star_wars_when_sequels/

>When they were making Star Wars nobody knew if it would be a success

That's to some extent a story Lucasfilm love to taut around "It was the little engine that could!" but its not quite like that. Yeah, it was risky. But it was also a big, fantastical blockbuster, coming on the heels of Jaws, by a star filmmaker whose last film was a huge hit with multiple academy award nominations.

Lucas had talked about two sequels and a possible prequel already in December 1975, and had taken some concrete steps towards making them including signing the actors and some of the crew for two more films in advance.

But yeah, he didn't bother fleshing out the plot for those potential sequels until he got around to making them: Star Wars was made very much one film at a time and as a result is full of inconsitences and retcons.

Star Wars kinda of changed through the script drafts. At some points, it was very deeply indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs, at other points it was more indebted to Kurosawa, but some of those influences kind of got watered down as the scripts were worked on.

I would say the biggest influences on Star Wars were, by descending order of significance, Flash Gordon, EE Smith's Galactic Patrol, Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, and Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars.

There are other influences like Dune, a whole bunch of World War II movies and, would you imagine, Tolkien's The Hobbit, but they're much more minor.

>This question might be asked very frequently but I would like to know. It’s also completely fine if you think they shouldn’t be compared since they’re both incredible. I would like to hear peoples thoughts. In my opinion? They are both one of the best trilogies in cinema history and they are my one of my trilogies ever. Both are visual spectacles for their time with incredible characters.

They should and shouldn't be compared.

They're both, principally, fantasy trilogies: The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy, Star Wars is space fantasy. They're both cyclical; i.e. they by and large tell a single story across three entries, as compared to something more anthological like Indiana Jones or even Marvel.

Having said that, there are also huge differences: Star Wars was made one film at a time, three years apart, with different creatives coming in and out, and notably with a big budget spike after the first film, which largely functions as a standalone vignette. Many of the story choices made across the trilogy were late-in-the game retcons, including (but not limited to) the pivotal reveal in The Empire Strikes Back. By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is ostensibly one film exhibited in three parts.

As a result, I'd say The Lord of the Rings has the advantage of uniformity: all three films feel cut from the same cloth and genuine continuations of each other, while The Empire Strikes Back feels - in scope, style, tone and plot - a total break from the world of the original film. Its also more uniform in quality: The Empire Strikes Back tends to be people's pick for the best of three Star Wars films, and Return of the Jedi is pretty consistently voted the worst. The Lord of the Rings is much harder to draw such distinctions, precisely because its pretty much one film in three parts.

I'm sure people in this thread will point out that Star Wars was more avant-garde for special effects and more influential. That's all true, but I think films should be evaluated first and foremost by what they make us feel as individuals when we watch them over how influential they are on cinema history. Ultimately, you have to sit down and watch it!

I pick The Lord of the Rings.

Hell yeah!

I'm the opposite.

I think drama should be treated as a commitment and an endeavour, and when a movie is 160 minutes long or longer, its nothing it not a commitment.