Hot take: It’s not that LotR was a fluke, it’s that it’s massively overrated. It’s just your standard big-budget American blockbuster with amazing visuals and music that does little more than pay lip service to its source material. I have to laugh when people get up in arms about the character derailment of Luke in the sequel trilogy but nobody bats an eye at Aragorn just straight-up murdering Mouth during negotiations in RotK. I likewise don’t get the hate for the Hobbit movies, as if they’re somehow obviously worse than LotR. I really don’t see it, to me they’re just more of the same.
Well, kinda. Yes in the sense that it makes people’s blood boil, no in the sense of being poorly thought out due to being hastily formulated. It’s been twenty years, I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.