Thank you! Always great to hear from a fellow Tolkien fan.

I agree with you, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a cinematic masterpiece. It really put fantasy on the map audio-visually. I think I read somewhere that no one had a clue how to depict epic fantasy like that on the big screen till Peter Jackson did it.

I like your analogy there with the bread and butter, it really fits. One film would have been perfect, but, well, Hollywood is the perennial cash cow and suffers from sequelitis....