A 'darker' Hobbit

[Sauron the White]

fron Nogrod in a post attempting to refute my claim that the professional critics lavished acclaim upon the 3 LOTR films:

Collective praise by the critics? I'm not sure about the U.S. if every critic is fed by the big movie-corporations but at least in Europe I think most of the critics had a long list of reservations and some even scorned the whole project. So at least here it was not a "collective praise"...

If you look at two different websites you will get the proof of my point. The first is metacritic.com -- it keeps track of professional media critics reviews. It tries to limit itself to only the full time critics. Here are the figures for approximately 40 reviews they tracked

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
92 out of 100 - listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

THE TWO TOWERS
88 out of 100 listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

RETURN OF THE KING
94 out of 100 listed by the site as getting "universal acclaim"

rottentomatoes.com is a bit more expanisve in thier definition of a film critic so they have between 175 and 227 listed. Here are the figures for the 3 LOTR films

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
93% positive out of 183 critics reviews

THE TWO TOWERS
97% positive our of the 206 critics reviews

RETURN OF THE KING
94% positive our of the 227 critics reviews

Again, my point is NOT that the critics are always right. Sometimes the public can love a film that critics hate or vice versa. Sometimes the industry can bestow awards of excellence of films few saw while spurning the fan favorites of the year. The 3 LOTR films are the exception because they achieved the level of a rousing success by three distinct measurements of film success
box office take
critical acclaim
industry awards

Name me any other three films by the same director which can match that feat?

You can hate Peter Jackson and his work all you want. But to ignore the success of the films is simply denying the historical record.