I didn’t like this movie because it ruined the books for me. I’ve read the books numerous times and I know them forwards and backwards, but watching the movie was a major disappointment because:
1) The way I had imagined the books was totally over-ridden by the way the movie portrayed the characters and events.
2) The movie was not as faithful to the books as I had hoped.

The first disappointment is to be expected. It is an impossibility to make a movie to each reader’s vision of the book. The second disappointment, however, was not expected. I can deal with departing from minor details and adding in small cinematic twists, but the deletion of an entire character, event, and place (Tom Bombadil, the tree that nearly eats one of the hobbits, and the Barrow-downs) was going too far.

I understand that the movie was already long and that the production time and cost was outrageously high, but J.R.R. Tolkien spent more time perfecting this story in book form.

The movie itself, from a cinematic viewpoint, is amazingly detailed and goes above and beyond what is expected for special effects, costumes, and sets, but that still doesn’t make up for the book-to-movie flaws.

I highly suggest that anyone who saw this movie also reads the books.

-Asmithar

If you love it, you adore it. If you hate it – I doubt anything will change your mind, and I’m happy enough not to try!

Much as I adore the Lord of the Rings films, there is another aspect to these DVDs. Not only do you get to see the extended version – adding back in so many scenes perhaps not essential to the plot, but adding so much depth and characterisation – but the wealth of extras is just staggering. I don’t think anything has given me such an understanding of the entire film-making process, not just background to LotR.

This is the only time I’ve ever felt the urge to sit through a movie commentary! I listened to the cast one ages ago, but last week I finally sat through the directors’ commentary. It does add a lot of interesting little facts, although it can be a bit rambling at times – it can take far longer to talk about a scene than that scene is on screen for. With Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philipa Boyens all sitting together, there is also less variety than the cast commentary, but it does add another aspect of knowing how the films were put together.

My major complaint, though, was having sat through the commentary, I then had to see the film again!!