Film tourism and the motives driving film tourists are important topics in tourism studies; nonetheless, only recently social media comments have been employed to understand and analyse film tourism. We analyse TripAdvisor reviews spanning from 2015 to 2022 that pertain to the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies, employing various known natural language processing methods to explore the connection between tourists’ motivations and emotions. Such user-generated content is analysed to identify both stable trends and significant changes in tourist behaviours and preferences. We find a prevalent motive among visitors to be the allure of the movie sets, while emotions reported range from surprise and anticipation to occasional moments of fear. Theoretical insights and practical implications for destination management are discussed.