Director Kenji Kamiyama and executive producer Peter Jackson make sure this latest installment in the Tolkien universe looks great but it feels unnecessary

It’s not strange that The Lord of the Rings is receiving the animation treatment—after all, J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy was initially mainstreamed by Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 film, which established many of the visual designs that now define the material and heavily influenced Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy.

At the start of the century, we were gifted with what was and will forever be one of film's greatest adaptations with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Unsurprisingly, after that massive success,