I don't think it could bomb quite that badly, Phantom Menace took all of the Star Wars Mythology and pissed all over it from the ground up.

it was fucked before it producers/screenplay/directors and actors had a chance to fuck with it... undeveloped characters, making Darth Vader into a little goody two shoes who should stick to watching cartoon netowrk, making the force 'medichlorines' parasite little things in your cells instead of a mythical ancient power... you could go on and on and on... all of this was written into it... from scratch.


As soon as the story was written it was fucked. But Tolkien has already taken care of that.
Jackson is never going to get that luxury, the source material is done and dusted, set in stone, he cna omit and play up certain things but he can't bastardise it completely like phantom menace did.