Worth the Wait

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2001)

Peter Jackson has done an excellent job transforming Tolkien's masterpiece into one of the most beautiful and exciting movies I have ever seen. The visuals in this movie are incredible. This movie will be studied far into the future as a monumental piece of work.
Purists will complain about this scene or that being cut, but I appreciate the fact that Jackson carried the essence of the story throughout the film, and make me feel that most of the scenes that were missing happened off screen.
I turned to my wife at times during the film and said that they had just skipped 50 pages from one scene to the next, later we were speaking with another friend (both he and my wife have not read the books), and they commented that they liked that. I feel that Peter Jackson's decision to make a great movie, not to make a word for word translation of the book to film was proper and for the best.
I will be purchasing this DVD as soon as it is released. I am hoping that there will be multiple commentary tracks. I would love one track with the nine, and one with Peter Jackson and Andrew Lesnie (the cinematographer), Howard Shore (score), and Alan Lee (Art direction).
I think that the all of the above deserve Oscars, and I hope that everyone gets the chance to see this movie.
Two things to know before going: 1) there is no resolution at the end, this is not a self-contained story. 2) this is not a children's movie, at least anymore than Braveheart was a movie for kids.