Well written in the Hollywood sense yes, if we're talking about Lord of the Rings. "Let's hunt some Orc"? How about "What does your heart tell you?" I swear I heard that in some other trilogy...
Well played... Sean Astin was far better than he ever was in those screwball shit-fests of the early 90's. In fact, I'll say pretty much most of the cast were dead on. But Orlando Bloom can't act.
Well scored... a lot of it's pretty damned good, but the track they used for the Two Towers trailer was *awful*. I thought it was stock trailer music, but no - it was on the soundtrack. BLECCCH...
Into the West was though, a particularly astonishing piece of music. Don't really like Annie Lennox's voice, but it's one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard.
Seriously, I don't have that much of a problem with Lord of the Rings, but the view that they are the greatest films of our time and that they circumvent the Hollywood template is sheer rubbish. Whether or not they were 'made like independant movies' doesn't stop the end result from being overly predictable and box-office friendly (at the expense of the movies themselves I think).
But anyway, lemme reiterate, they've got a lot going for 'em.