10 Things The Hobbit Does Better Than The Lord Of The Rings

10. Conveying A Childlike Sense Of Wonder

The Hobbit was written as a children's book, while the Lord of the Rings, a much longer work, was more high fantasy, and was written when J.R.R. Tolkien's publisher requested a sequel to his beloved original. It's not surprising, then, that the first book more easily captures the minds of children, while The Lord of the Rings is something many readers tackle in their early teens (maybe with an old Zepplin record playing in the background). The same is true of the films: the sense of wonder, the childlike awe of exploring a new world, is better conveyed in The Hobbit series, right from the get-go. It's there when we meet Bilbo, the mischievously mysterious Gandalf, the whimsical arrival of the Dwarves, but it's still there when we get to the trolls, and even when Bilbo meets the legendary Smaug. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, captured this feeling briefly in The Fellowship of the Ring, but dropped it soon after as the film and its later chapters became darker in tone.