Hey, it's me. said:

I maybe wrong, but wasnt the Hobbit more a children's story than LOTR? LOTR dealt with more 'adult' issues such as power, corruption and greed albeit in a fantasy setting. Star Wars was unique because you loved it as a kid in a very one dimensional kind of way, and grew to understand the deeper tones of it as you got older. I don't know many (if any) 5-10 year olds that fell in love with LOTR the first time they saw it.

I was in that age range when I first saw LOTR, when it first came out. And I fell very deeply in love with it, a love that was second only to my love of the OT.

And I was not the only one. I had a fair share of friends my age who fell in love with the LOTR films when they came out. Probably not the same amount as when SW came out, in terms of the age range; but that's more due to the films' violence and PG-13 rating which made some parents a little less likely to let their kids see them; rather than because the movies didn't share the same magical quality as the OT.

Trust me, LOTR is my generation's Star Wars.