Lord of the Rings is a staple of childhood for many people, particularly those who were in their pre-teen to teenaged years between 2001 and 2003. The original trilogy created fantasy fans out of a generation of youths and prompted a wave of fantasy releases that mostly paled in comparison.
Despite their age — even Return of the King is nearly 20 years old — these films remain enduringly popular, as do their follow-up Hobbit prequels, which were released between 2012 and 2014. The way the films were released does spark some confusion, however, particularly for new fans who may not know which order to watch them in.
What order to watch the Lord of the Rings movies in
The Hobbit films, which were released around a decade after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, actually take place before the Lord of the Rings storyline. This is a bit bemusing, given the films’ release order, and has caused some people to watch the films out of order, generating even more confusion. Add to this the recently released The Rings of Power ⏤ a spin-off of the popular franchise ⏤ and there are too many separate stories and timelines for anyone but die-hard fans to keep track of.
How to watch the films chronologically
Thankfully, it’s not hard at all to determine the correct viewing order for the Lord of the Rings films and shows. If you’re looking to enjoy them chronologically, you’ll want to start with Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power before pivoting to the first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey. None of the Hobbit films deviate from a linear order, which means that you’ll then simply progress to Desolation of Smaug and polish off the series with Battle of the Five Armies.
Once you’ve finished with Bilbo’s journey, you can safely begin the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with quite a bit of extra backstory to bolster your experience. Like the Hobbit series, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is told on a linear, straightforward timeline, which means you’ll simply start with Fellowship of the Ring, move on to Two Towers, and polish the whole franchise off with Return of the King.
By the time you’ve finished the series and all six films — in their extended form, assuming you’ve got the time — any Lord of the Rings cravings should be well and truly satiated. But this timeline only works until several upcoming Lord of the Rings projects hit screens, and boost the amount of LOTR content for us to enjoy. Releases like The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim are set to arrive within the next few years, and they’ll add even more content to the wealth of existing Middle Earth favorites.
Watching the films in order of release
If you’re looking to enjoy the Lord of the Rings franchise by order of release, rather than chronologically, you can certainly do so. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was released first, does a great job of explaining its backstory, which means that very few viewers should end up lost, even if they’ve never seen the films — or the Hobbit trilogy — before.
If you aim to enjoy the movies this way, you can start where it all began with The Fellowship of the Ring. The next two films in the series will follow in natural course, and then you can launch straight into the Hobbit series — again, in classic order. Then you’ll want to move on to The Rings of Power, which was released in 2022, and eventually to War of the Rohirrim, and — once they’ve been polished off by Warner Bros. — the upcoming remakes of the original trilogy.