Big, noisy, violent 70 feet Play Station, giving the outsider nothing but fights and an endless struggle to remember names - so many names mentioned only so few times, that the non-book-addict has no chance at all to remember them.

And then 35mm on 70 feet - with lots of wide angle shots - that's tuff !

Positive: The most impressing soundtrack, i've ever heard - even though, local THX didn't prevent distortion when things really got goin'. -Those back-channel boxes were just about turning wrong side out, -and i don't believe, they ought to....

On my right side: 3 grown-up readers voted thumbs up
On my left: Both youngsters and growns - no books behind them - just the film, felt like me.

Much to much hype for a big budget splatter thing, that may flop or go right over the hill - I can't say. -But i'm looking foreward to hear myu audience next wednesday morning. -Everything is sold out and has been so for long - and they are all riding the hype, for sure...

Let's just hope !

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The man with the magic hands.

I liked it.

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The sound was mixed very well and some of the scenes were definitely cool looking. I loved the evil horsemen. I also liked all the other evil stuff except for the fake giant that attacked them (before the fire dude guy). He was defeated by computer animated people! I didn't feel like I was in the theater for 3 hours (except during the trailers) so I guess that's pretty good.

Was it just me, or was Elijia Wood's neck thicker than his head?

Excellent movie but I wish there were more details from the novel. The characters were just about how I had envisioned them in my head but they seemed a little to random.

I would have liked to have seen more of the black forest and of the shire and some more depth to the culture of the Hobbits but this was just about as good as I think they could have done and kept the movie under 3 1/2 hours...

Total rating 9 of 10.

I am/was an avid reader of the Hobbit books so I knew the characters and the story.

As to the comment of where Tom (Bombadil) was (and the entities residing on that part of Middle Earth)...I can understand the cut in that one...it didn't help with telling the story and would have made the film longer without helping one understand the characters. As the others have noted, there are enough "new" people to learn without adding those that don't contribute to the "Fellowship"

With any fantasy book, what we all envision the characters and places look like are largely made up in our minds based on the descriptions in the book(s). As such we all will envsion different things. To that end, I think they did an EXCELLENT job...the characters and places look right and add or possibly change in a favorable way what I had envisioned.

I generally dislike narrators in movies and LOTR has one that mainly gets the newbie going. I can live with that though I see the newbie's frustrations in having to have a crash course in the world of Middle Earth and being confused.

One inexcusible failure is the lack of time line. We start out with Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday (111) and we have a picture of Bilbo and how he looks. Unless I missed it, there was no mention that Frodo's adventure begins some 17 years later! The problem I have with this is that Frodo looks like he hasn't aged (an insider would attribute this to the power of the ring) but when we meet Bilbo again in Rivendale, he looks significantly older! In the film, these events seem to be within a week or so of each other, certainly not years. First Bilbo leaves, then Frodo leaves. The only clue to the amount of time is Bilbo's aging.

Other than that, I would have actually like the film to be longer (and hopefully it will be in the DVD's Collector's edition) since one who loves the books will want yet more detail and the film seems to try and capture as much detail as time will allow.

As to the film's ending, it is much the same as the book...at the dessolution of the "Fellowship" the book ends. The next two parts will become much more complicated since we have several small groups doing different things that we must keep track.

I can tell you outsiders right now that the next episode "The Two Towers" will have less of an "ending" than this one. The only ending can possibly come after the third installment "The Return of the King" I think of the story as really 6-parts with each book as two parts. The ending isn't until the end of the 6th part. Figuring that it will take about 9 hours to tell the story...it would be a bit long for one sitting! Fortunately, the middle section "The Two Towers" is the shortest and probably the most boring for some and the most complicated for others.

I am surprised that they didn't try making THE HOBBIT first to see if the market was there (and it would have been). The Hobbit does a great job of setting up the feel of Middle Earth and is a complete story unto itself.

From what I have seen.... 4 out of 5 stars.

Steve

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Steve

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A reasonable assumption on your part. However, Bilbo just started to age naturally after the ring left him. The ring doesn't stop aging, just slows it down based upon usage. Since Bilbo didn't use the ring much (that we are aware of) he had only some age slow-down. Unlike other creatures that gained hundreds of years.

Steve

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