Lord of the Rings Trilogy is Better than the Harry Potter Trilogy

A poll on this very DDO site shows that 16% say HP is better and 84% say LotR is better. http://www.google.com... If public opinion is a gauge to measuring which is better as my opponent thinks, I wonder how he goes about cherry-picking whose polls he will trust? This one clearly isn"t on his side! Like I said, public taste in entertainment can shift at any time, be it in certain books or movies. Did you know that HP was actually influenced by LotR? Yes, it borrows from Tolkien"s genius, but doesn"t do a very good job at emulating the master. Tolkien's Wormtongue became Rowling's Wormtail, Tolkien's Aragon became Rowling's Aragog, Tolkien's Gandalf became Dumbledore, who was a tall wizard in robes with a long white beard in LotR, and had the same exact appearance in HP. They even wanted the same guy who played Gandalf to play Dumbledore, that"s how much they tried to get it to be like the masterpiece LotR is. "Sir Ian McKellen was offered the role, but he turned it down, having played the similar character Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy." http://www.google.com... Rowling couldn"t even come up with an original wizard! Even HP fans who gave it positive reviews had to admit: "Rowling's debt to the great 20th-century English fantasists -- J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, E. Nesbit, Alan Garner -- made her work seem less homage than unabashedly derivative..."Tolkien continues to CAST A LONG SHADOW OVER Harry Potter's world..."But the echoes of Tolkien and Lewis are sometimes too obvious. The locket that is one of Voldemort's Horcruxes exerts a malignant power over its owners, inevitably evoking the One Ring." http://www.google.com... "For the final, climactic confrontation... people expect something epic, momentous, archetypal. So it"s no surprise that the closer Rowling gets to that confrontation, the more heavily she relies on borrowings from writers with a natural gift for that sort of thing: Tolkien, Lewis, even Philip Pullman. The locket horcrux that weighs down whoever wears it, sapping their initiative and hope, is one of the more obvious quotes from "The Lord of the Rings," along with the thunderous last-minute arrival of centaur troops at the Battle of Hogwarts (the Ride of Rohan...)" http://www.google.com... Tolkien's Sauron is called The Dark Lord so Rowling decided to call Voldemort the same thing, and both of them were seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead (or not a threat) for a long time. Just like the One Ring, the horcrux locket negatively affects the personality of its wearer. Rowling read Lord of the Rings as a teenager, and weather consciously or subconsciously, she never forgot many elements of it which influenced her writing of HP. So how could HP bite the hand which fed it and claim to be better than its master? It can"t. Rowling herself admitted Tolkien was more creative and original than she was, saying: "Tolkien created a whole NEW mythology, which I WOULD NEVER CLAIM TO HAVE DONE." "Tolkienian scholar Tom Shippey has maintained that "no modern writer of epic fantasy has managed to escape the mark of Tolkien, no matter how hard many of them have tried." http://www.google.com... So she admits LotR mythology was new, original, inventive, but she did no such thing, she just piggy-backed on the work of greater minds like Tolkien. This is why Voldemort had to use horcruxes to transcend death, because Sauron did it first with the One Ring. LotR had a greater impact on the whole history of fantasy writing than HP, even influencing HP itself - how"s that for cultural influence? This is why LotR Mirkwood Forest became HP"s Forbidden Forest, Gurthang"s Wand of Death became HP"s The Elder Death Wand, Tolkien"s Mirkwood Spiders became Rowling"s Forbidden Forest Spiders, Longshanks became Crookshanks, Longbottom Village became Longbottom Neville, Tolkien"s Mordor became Rowling"s Morsmordre, LotR"s Mirror of Galadriel became HP"s Mirror of Erised, Tolkien had Butterbur - the Prancing Pony Landlord, so Rowling had to put a Butterbeer in HP too. Gollum betrayed Frodo and was pitied by Bilbo, Kreacher betrayed Sirius and was pitied by Dumbledore. There was a hound in LotR named Fang so HP had to have Hagrid"s hound with the same name. Green Dragon Hobbiton in LotR became Green Dragon Pub in HP, Carcharoth became Karkeroff, and Tolkien"s Old Man Willow was watered down to Rowling"s Whomping Willow. This is HP"s lack of originality and creativity in having to borrow so much from LotR. LotR is a far more staggering achievement than Harry Potter. Tolkien went to great lengths to tell his story, creating languages, cultures into which those languages developed, and histories from which the cultures and peoples were formed. Elvish is a complete language with rules of grammar and everything which you could learn if you so desired. Harry Potter can never measure up to the sheer expanse of Tolkien's mythology, the depth of his symbology, nor the beauty of his prose. LotR was original and has tremendouly influenced fantasy as a genre of literature whereas Harry Potter is hugely derivative. Rowling patched together already existing mythology, already existing fiction, and set in England, whereas Tolkien created his entire world. Middle Earth is one of the greatest constructions in modern fiction. Effective advertising can make anything sell, even junk food, so sales don't make HP better. Rowling didn't have to please a gay community, the book is already a best-seller. Gays didn't criticize it. She says the reason Albus doesn't have a woman in the book is because he is gay, but we don't get that idea reading the book = poor character development. The Ring was plain like normal rings, its words only revealed by fire, and the very day Gandalf found out Bilbo had a ring of invisibility he went investigating; he didn't know before, and certainly not for 60 yrs. Counter: since a time travel device was available in HP, why didn"t they go back in time to stop Voldemort when he was young? Sauron did guard Mt. Doom with legions of orcs, it was Aragon's plan that drew them out so Frodo could enter. HP films suffer the same kind of production errors Con alleges for LotR Where did the pony in LotR go? Well, where did the book in Ron's hand go? Or the dirt on the floor? Sauron wasn't easy to get to to cut off his finger. The ring was almost indestructible, seeking its master. Sauron beats Gandalf in the Hobbit without a physical body, so this plan didn't make him vulnerable, it kept him alive in spirit form, still powerful enough to fight and rebuild his empire. LotR won 17 oscars, HP won none, and LotR got more good reviews. Thank you