Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2001)

I've never read the books (don't chastise me, I've gotten enough already) so instead of comparing the film with the book, I will compare it to Harry Potter.
Both are:
Films with magic & mystery
Set-ups for sequels
Being accused of being too long
Adaptations of incredibly popular books
Treading the fine line that separates good films from Dungeons & Dragons
The major difference is that Harry Potter is a filmed adaptation of a book, whereas Fellowship of the Ring is an actual film unto itself. Sure, Fellowship had an ending that didn't complete the total story line, but Harry Potter gave you more of a feeling that this was simply the first of many stories.
The real difference is in the motivation. Harry Potter was clearly made to capitalize on the popularity of the books. There's nothing wrong with that. I liked the movie, but you can tell that it was made in order to keep all the fans of the books happy and to make sure that they'll be back next year for the sequel. Why else would you hire a director with no personal style. Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is clearly something that Peter Jackson (along with everyone else involved) really wanted to make. They worked hard and it shows.
Another major difference was in the language. Both contained characters, objects and places that, if you're not familiar with the back story, were just plain confusing. Harry Potter dealt with this by holding our hands through the long explanations. Fellowship just plain showed us everything and made sure that, if we didn't understand something, we wouldn't be lost.
Though it was easy to follow the action and story, I was still left with a few questions. Like I said, I didn't read the book so I'm not familiar with all the characters already. To be perfectly honest, I don't even know what Middle Earth is. Really, is there also a Left & Right, or a Top & Bottom? And those elves, is there a specific reason why they had the highest cameo to character ratio? And why was that one friend of Frodo's even there? It seemed like his only purpose was screw things up and nearly get them all killed.
And a final word about the acting. That kid they got to play Harry Potter wasn't bad, but he wasn't particularly good either. Elijah Wood, on the other hand, really had that `I'm about to die' look down perfectly. He'd better have, he's got it more than half the time.