LOTR trilogy rerelease shows Hollywood’s disconnect from audiences

The lucrative rerelease of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy reflects more than just the staying power of the quarter-century-old JRR Tolkien-based film series; reveals a disturbing creative void in today’s Hollywood.

The epic high-adventure fantasy film “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” first released in 2001, grossed over $900 million at the box office. The sequels “The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Return of the King” (2003) grossed over $2 billion combined.

Re-releasing profitable and popular movies is a tradition that goes back generations, starting with classics like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Casablanca.” Before television and then video cassette recorders, theaters were the only place you could rewatch what you saw on the big screen in your neighborhood.

But studio executives realized that audiences found it satisfying to watch a movie more than once (or two, or more!), sometimes even years or decades apart. Holiday or anniversary re-releases have proven profitable. With the advent of IMAX technology and digital restoration capabilities, it’s become easy to find an excuse to reintroduce some classics.

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Over a hundred years of Hollywood filmmaking, more than 25,000 films have been produced. Today, large studios produce between 200 and 300 works each year. That may seem like a lot, but it’s a dramatic drop from a century ago, when more than 800 films were produced every 12 months.

Although the ranking of the films is subjective, the vast majority are forgettable; But some are unforgettable, and not always because we love them. It is interesting and revealing that, according to the Internet Movie Database IMDb, all but one of the 10 worst movies of all time (“RoboCop 3”) were made in this century. By contrast, only four of the top 10 movies were made in the last quarter century, and two of them were “The Lord of the Rings.”

Remember that British author JRR Tolkien wrote his famous series in the early to mid-last century.

One of Hollywood’s most interesting and surprising habits is the studios’ stubbornness and reluctance to make more movies that appeal to families. Instead, they insist on making movies that offend our moral sensibilities, despite evidence showing that cleaner, healthier meals would outperform the garbage they create. We are bombarded with dark stories filled with gratuitous swearing and unnecessary doses of sex and violence. Instead of goodness, we receive garbage.

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Because it’s more expensive to see a movie today than it was generations ago, it’s misleading to look at history’s top-grossing movies to see what appealed to audiences. Instead, look at which movies are selling the most tickets. Six of the top 10 plays seen by most people are solid family movies: “Gone with the Wind,” “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope,” “ET Extraterrestrial,” “The Sound of Music,” “The Ten Commandments” and 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

The seventh, “Jaws,” frightened many children and beachgoers alike, but was still relatively tame compared to today’s offerings. There are no “R” rated movies on the list.

So why not do more of what clearly works? This disconnect is something I’ve seen throughout my three decades working at Focus on the Family, a global family charity. We hear from countless moms and dads who are hungry for wholesome and inspiring movies. That’s why we’re releasing our first animated children’s movie in theaters next fall: “Adventures in the Odyssey: Journey to the Impossible.” It is the origin story of a long-running children’s radio program.

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Of course, movies reflect culture, but they also reveal the hearts and minds of those who run the studios and write the scripts for the stories told. You probably don’t know the name Lewis R. Foster, but you probably know the movie he wrote for which he won the Academy Award: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” starring Jimmy Stewart and directed by Frank Capra.

British actor Bernard Hill played the hero Théoden, king of Rohan, in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He died on May 5, 2024, at the age of 79. (PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Stewart credited the classic film, which follows the idealistic young senator fighting corruption in the D.C. swamp, with shaping his career and helping him see how strong and moral characters can positively impact the world. Foster personally embodied these ideals, loved America, his wife and family, and dreamed up the story. Because of this single story, Stewart pursued similar stories such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.

One man’s beautiful mind helps others become more beautiful too. Everything affects everything else.

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There’s a reason why the apostle Paul, who called himself “the chief of sinners,” encouraged people to be careful about what they watched and read. Frankly, there were no movies 2000 years ago, but there were plenty of other things influencing human behavior competing for attention. That is why Paul wrote, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if there is anything excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Of course, movies reflect culture, but they also reveal the hearts and minds of those who run the studios and write the scripts for the stories told.

If we truly want to save the culture, we will encourage more films like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that embody hope over fear, goodness over evil, and the importance of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice.

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In his review of “The Fellowship of the Ring” published in the New York Times in 1954, poet and essayist WH Auden praised the British author and suggested that his “invention is an unceasing advance.” He later added, “Mr. Tolkien is fortunate to have an incredible gift of naming and an extraordinarily precise gift of description. . . . No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me as much pleasure as ‘The Fellowship of the Ring.'”

Hollywood would be doing us all (and its own financial bottom line) a favor if it tried to emulate the same qualities of its screenwriters when bringing scripts and stories to the big screen.

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