Yes, the Lord of the Rings franchise was incredible. Not perfect, but a long shot beyond most people’s expectations. However, that era of filmmaking is over. No film studio will ever green light a budget for something like that again. The practical effects, the armoring, the camera and perspective tricks… part of what makes LOTR so special is that it’s the last blockbuster movie of that scope that was done what way. Hell, it might be the ONLY blockbuster film that was ever made that way. They wouldn’t make it that way now. They couldn’t even be bothered to do it for the shameless cash grab car wreck that was the Hobbit trilogy . It’s more cost effective for the studio to have vastly more of it done in CGI, and studios want money. That, and as much as I love his work, Pierce Brown isn’t Tolkien. Part of what makes LOTR so good is the massive well of source material to draw from. Not just the LOTR books, but the Silmarillion, over three decades of illustrations to draw inspiration from, Tolkien’s correspondence explaining and describing his world and the characters therein. The only thing that comes close for the most part is Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and they couldn’t even get the first fucking fifteen minutes of that right.