Lord of the Rings - Started with the Hobbit and has been downhill since then

Technically, the hobbit existed before lord of the rings. It was a story Tolkien wrote for his kids, that he later expanded and continued into lord of the rings. Initially, the ring wasn’t a ring of power, just a novel trick. And Gandalf wasn’t all powerful, he was an old friend caught up in bilbo’s shenanigans.

Now if you’re explicitly talking about the movie adaptations, yeah. The hobbit kind of lost its magic compared to the lord of the rings movies.