The Lord of the Rings movie series in superior to the Star Wars movie series.

I'll look at your rebuttals of my points before covering yours. 1. The original SW films were not low budget productions. They had a cumulative budget of $80 million, which adjusted for inflation is just over $350 million in 2015 dollars. The LOTR trilogy had a cumulative budget of $280 million, which is just over $390 million in 2015. That means SW was made on a budget just 10% smaller than LOTR. As for technology, costumes for LOTR were hand made for all actors in the large battle scenes, something that had not really been made easier in the 20 years that passed since the release of SW. I admit that there is the benefit of improved computer effects in LOTR, but that isn't the leading factor in their superiority - SW used much smaller sets with fewer actors, much more basic set design, more plain costumes, etc. These are things that were not held back by the earlier time period. 2. Yes, the matter of which story is better is opinion, but I would argue the depth of the lore is what makes LOTR better. Tolkien worked on his universe for decades, while Lucas wrote SW a couple of years before filming began. LOTR has a massive story structure that SW just doesn't have. Different groups/races/aliens/planets are mentioned in SW that audiences just accept as canon. In LOTR, these groups have entire languages, songs, histories, religions/mythologies, etc. that are actually written into the story and can be traced to real substantiated origins by the audience. 3. Acting is a huge part of the quality of a movie - if you can't believe or relate to a character's experiences, you can't really care about what's happening in the story. Millions of people watched and loved SW because the standard for good acting was not as high in the 1970s. I don't think that makes SW a BAD movie, I just thank it makes it LESS GOOD than LOTR. Harrison Ford is the only really big name actor (other than James Earl Jones who just lends his voice). Can you name another big success in the careers of Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher? LOTR had Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, and Cate Blanchett - all of whom are stars known for other major roles. 4. You are correct, I misspoke when I said everyone would die if Sauron won, they would have likely been enslaved. But I do believe that the world we see in Lady Galadriel's visions are objectively worse than a galaxy in the control of the Empire. People still lived with a degree of freedom at the beginning of SW ep. 4. In SW, the bad guys didn't want to make things worse, in LOTR they did. If the good guys failed in SW, nothing would have really changed from the status quo, whereas evil would have spread in LOTR. 5. Agreed. We drop the prequels from the debate for the sake of film quality. Now to your arguments. 1. Merchandise sales do not make a movie good. Transformers sell more merchandise than almost any other franchise, but the movies are terrible. 2. For inspiration of filmmakers, SW happened in the formative years of many of today's directors, when they were kids. It's very likely that future directors will cite inspiration from LOTR in their childhood. Again, this does not make the movie better. Nosferatu is an early horror movie that inspired directors for decades, but it's nowhere near as good as some of the movies that have come since. SW did not inspire space travel, space travel inspired SW - the moon landing was 8 years before Ep. 4. 3. LOTR has more awards and is critically held in higher regard. The SW trilogy won 10 Academy Awards. LOTR won 17 Academy Awards. We also have to remember that LOTR was made in a time of much more fierce film competition. SW was groundbreaking for its time, but LOTR was phenomenal in a time when movies were even better. On the IMDb top 250 films of all time, SW films rank 19th, 12th, and 72nd respectively. LOTR films rank 11th, 16th, and 9th respectively. On Rotten Tomatoes, SW films received 94%, 94%, and 80% respectively. LOTR films received 91%, 96%, and 95% respectively. 4. I certainly think LOTR has influenced the world in a HUGE way. It opened the doors on the fantasy genre. Popularity is NOT a measure of how good a movie is. This is evident by the success of mediocre films like Avatar, Fast and Furious, Transformers, etc. LOTR characters are very memorable, especially the fellowship. I admit Darth Vader is one of the most iconic villains in all of film, but that's more for his appearance than his character. You literally know nothing about Vader and his motivations or back story until the end of the second movie. Story is what matters in film, not popularity. More work went into the LOTR films as well, and it shows.