I think Viggo is a dork but I also think he’s right. The first movie was closer to the book, it was story driven. CGI in that one complemented the story nothing else. Starting with the next one, CGI started taking over, visuals over story and ROTR was worse.
The Hobbit (I’ve only seen the first one) was awful. CGI to the point of phoniness. I can’t blame the studios for funding these though, the movie going public (ie young people) don’t care about story. They didn’t grow up reading, they don’t have the desire for a plot.
The Hobbit movies are okay. Not great literature. I’ve read the LOTR and the Hobbit multiple times and at the first viewing of each movie I had the book in my mind and was disappointed. The second (and in the case of LOTR third time to watch the movie, I got into the visual and accepted that the story line had to change. Most recently I wanted the second Hobbit movie with my granddaughter and loved it. The acting in the Hobbit movies is actually okay. I put them in the same category as the Raiders of the Lost Ark and the other Indiana Jones movie I liked, the Grail with Sean Connery. Fun to watch, not great literature.