User blog comment:J.S. Clingman/10 Good Reasons why The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy is better than the Star Wars Film Series/@comment-69.87.228.32-20181119014238

Why does one have to be better than the other? I love them BOTH! I can’t rationally compare those 2 movies, although I admire your attempt to do that because that’s quite a challenge! Please don’t take this as an insult because it’s definitely not meant to be, but I think my 19 year old son could understand what your trying to say and might even agree with you. I say that because, growing up during the time when the original trilogy first came out puts LOTR in a different, but equally just as amazing, place in my heart. I was born in 1972. My husband was born in 1970. He went to all three movies when they came out (you couldn’t watch a movie any other way at that time-wow, this is making me feel really old!). I lived in a neighborhood full of boys. Everything was Star Wars: T-shirts, (any article of clothing, actually), wall posters, sheets and blankets, lunch boxes, and a million action figures laying around everywhere both inside and outside. Movie theaters were in the malls back then, so you’d always see the posters on the walls and the crowds of people coming out of the movie were always so excited. (Everyone was walking out speechless after Empire Strikes Back, though!) I wanted to BE Princess Leah. It’s strange looking back now because I really had a crush on Luke! I was really young. I thought Han Solo was a jerk, because I based my view on whatever Princess Leah thought. Han Solo is so much more my type, now that I’m “grown up”, lol! There were commercials with C-3PO and R2-D2, and TV Specials that are really kind of lame today, but back then they were fun. I have really great memories of that time and if I could pick an era to grow up in, I’d pick the early 1980’s all over again! Then we got to watch our son grow up with the Prequels, while we finally got to see the reason WHY Darth Vader suddenly turned away from Luke and killed Emperor Palpatine. (That never fully made sense till the Prequels.) Also, we never knew what Stormtroopers looked like. We never knew they were all clones of Jango Fett, or about Camino. We had a theory but never knew Palpatine was the REAL bad guy, not Darth Vader. Darth Vader was the scary bad guy to us, believe it or not. So it’s a completely different movie at a completely different time in my life. We also love LOTR. Ironically, my son is home from college and he’s puttin on the The Two Towers extended version right now. We watched The Fellowship of the Ring last time he was home. Our family has loved these movies since they came out. I’ve read the book, as well as The Hobbit. My husband, who does not like to read, actually read that whole book after seeing the last movie. I think they did such an amazing job with keeping the movies as close to the book as possible. You can draw parables from LOTR to your own life. I always ask my son, “so where are you now on your college journey” and he’ll tell me from both a semester view (the lead up to the Battle of Pelinor Fields) and an all 4 years view (Weathertop)! Like I said, both of these movies hold a completely different place in my life and my heart and I couldn’t say one was better than the other. Both Luke’s and Frodo’s journeys are amazing. But I still enjoyed your article!