I would suggest that Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings films surpass Tolkien 's originals , because , to be blunt , Jackson makes films better than Tolkien writes ; Jackson 's cinematic style , sweeping , lyrical , by turns intimate and epic , is greatly preferable to Tolkien 's prose style , which veers alarmingly between windbaggery , archness , pomposity , and achieves something like humanity , and ordinary English , only in the parts about hobbits , the little people who are our representatives in the saga to a far greater degree than its grandly heroic ( or snivellingly crooked ) men .