People are Generally Dumb.

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2002)

I saw The Fellowship of the Ring without reading the book beforehand, and with only a vague recollection of the 1970's animated version of The Hobbit (horrible!). I knew the basic gist of things, ie. The ring was bad, the ring had to be destroyed, the ring made you invisible. I also knew a little bit about the hobbits just from word of mouth. I was expecting to be entirely clueless through tLotR, as I had no knowledge of the book.
I was completely blown away, however, that the entire movie actually made *sense* to me. Sure, I didn't know much of the history of Gloin and Gimli, or Moria, or who the heck Dain was, but those were all fairly trivial things to the overall plot of the movie. They obviously did a great job in making it understandable, the only improvement I ask is that they let you learn people's names. I couldn't even remember who Gimli and Legolas were, and confused Boromir with Pippin when talking about it afterwards, because they hardly ever used names in the movie.
The next day I went out and bought the entire LotR 'trilogy', plus The Hobbit, and went home to read. I finished both The Hobbit and The Fellowship in less than a week, and was rather pleased with both of them. The Hobbit answered my questions about the dwarves and Moria, and the Fellowship gave me the names. Sure, the movie cut quite a few of the fun parts from the book, but people need to stop being dumb and realize that the movie was already 3 hours long, and much of the stuff in the book that was cut wasn't all *that* important. Also, Arwen Undomiel/Evenstar was given a more.. influental role because it help make the movie appeal to more people, and it's much less boring than Frodo riding alone.
Overall, while I hold the book at a higher level than the movie, I have to say that the movie was about as close as possible, and that no one on Earth could have made it better. It's not my favorite movie, but it makes my top ten list at about 4 or 5.
On another note, I hold nothing against people who didn't enjoy the movie, that's their opinion, but as for those who complain about the ending, I think you're all ignorant fools. It's not a single movie! It's a zarkin' trilogy! The movie was 2 1/2 hours long, and they *have* to leave you wanting something, or you won't come back next time! Get a life, please.