I dont agree. They aren't the greatest movies ever made at all. They are great though with Fellowship being one of the greatest imo.

With regards to casting, most of the cast was fine. I had issues with Elrond, and while Hugo Weaving is an amazing actor he is not what I imagined Elrond to look like. An elf having a receding hairline and wrinkles is unheard of in Tolkiens Legendarium.

Speaking of Tolkiens Legendarium, I think the movies are great movies but not necessarily the best adaptation. The movies made a lot of changes (not talking about Tom Bombadil), things that altered the public perception of how certain characters are meant to be. For example book Frodo is nothing like Movie Frodo, which is unfortunate because Frodo is one of the top 3 main protagonists.

In terms of directing, Jackson has some flaws. His main flaw is that he overdramatizes scenes to create tension. He does this by changing what actually happened in the book and replacing it with his own made up version of the event. That is fine if you do it sparingly but Jackson overdramatizes so frequently that it changes the personality of characters. For example Frodo in the books is more of a leader, wise hobbit who makes logical decisions. Frodo in the movies is constantly weak from the ring from about halfway through the first movie. In the movies he gets stabbed or thrown into danger at least 12 different times, and is always getting saved. Whereas in the books he gets saved probably like 3 times total, and He actually does heroic acts by saving all the hobbits.

Also when it comes to directing, a lot of the plot layout was borrowed from the previous LOTR animated movies from the 80s. The cartoons also miss out Tom Bombadil, Barrow Wights, Glorfindel. In fact the scene where the Hobbits are hiding under the tree and a Black Riders is creeping up over them, is taken from exactly the same shot in the animated movie. The camera view, the way they are all positioned on the screen is exactly the same. Which is funny because in the books, the Hobbits are not all together hiding under the tree.

I am not sure about LOTR being seriously considered as "unfilmable". I think that is more of a meme than anything. Specially considering most of the movie beats and plot choices follow the exact same beats as in the LOTR cartoon from the 80s. The cartoons made all the same choices like not including Tom Bombadil, not including Barrow Wights, not including Glorfindel. Even many of the iconic scenes from the movies like the Black Riders creeping over the Hobbits over the tree trunk can be found exactly in the same way as in the cartoons, which is odd because in the books the 4 hobbits weren't huddled together when the Black Riders was there. So clearly a lot of east inspiration was taken from the cartoons.

>Star Wars was simply an updated version of an extremely common "hero journey" story.

Dune predates Star Wars, and Star Wars is basically Dune with laser swords. Dune has The Voice and Star Wars has Jedi mind powers, Dune has spice and SW has spice, Dune has noble families and politics in space and SW has the same. There's a whole bunch of other similarities.

I thought Star Wars was just Dune but with laser Samurai swords added because they're cool.