waiting for it to arrive at a _really_ big screen

Rating: Null/10 (7 January 2002)

It is a very good film adaptation. I've only read the last dozen or so comments, so I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this yet. Tolkien wrote LOTR and intended it to be sold as a single novel. His publishers did not think it would sell otherwise, and therefore had him divide up into three. The reason why the film ends without resolution is because the book ends without resolution. It is an installment.
There is no way to "fix" Fellowship to have a "real" ending because the arc of the story was never written to include sub-conclusions: climaxes to individual events, yes; concluded storylines, no. ALL of the major events culminate in the last book. Tucked in amongst this is the sense of a history immeasurablly more vast than what we know. This history actually exists in Tolkien's writing, and is easily researched if you enjoy reading a scholar's attempt at writing history backwards (skillful, and often brilliant, but so realistic as to be realistically tedious).
We are constantly exposed to the edges and the ends of other people's stories. Whether under Moria or in the woods of Lorien, we are encouraged to recognize the massive scope of history and that history is an interweaving of separate stories into a perceived whole. In this story, the One Ring is the unifier. It brings the disparate storylines together and breaks them apart again.
In epic, history, and real life, massive issues have wide ranging influence. This war of good against ultimate evil is world-shaking, and there is no way that 9 companions riding around the deserts of Mordor can be the only ones affected or responding to Sauron's threat. The companions join and disperse and rejoin and redisperse in new configurations. It is all a very conscious, even stylized, mimicking of an organic process.
With respect to the film, this interweaving of past, present, and future is preserved, if often condensed and truncated by necessity. It really is a very long novel, with diversions which often lead nowhere in particular. I think those who find the characterizations in the novel to be weak are mistaking their simplicity and idealization for lack. Read the Song Roland, or better yet, Beowulf, for the kind of history he drew from.
My problems with the film are primarily about shades of meaning, minor points of characterization. The only one which matters is the scene at the Prancing Pony when Frodo accidently dons the ring. In the book, Frodo is tempted by the ring and succumbs through vanity and pride. The difference is small, but significant, as Frodo should not seem to be always strong against the ring, but rather always struggling. A minor point, when compared to the otherwise very faithful film. Yes, there are issues about class and race in the film as in the novel. Tolkien was emulating an Anglo-Saxon environment (Eomer, Theoden King, etc), as well writing from a British monarchist context as a highly educated academic.
Nonetheless, I loved it. Yes, I would have liked to see more of Frodo's adventurous and Sam's poetic spirits, but too much was already crammed into 3 hours, and there is no way to 'touch' upon everything. Now, if it would just get to that really big screen at that really big theater with the fantastic sound system (if you are in Manhattan, you'll know the one I mean), instead of the 4X6 postage stamp I saw it on at my local multiplex!