Great movie

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2001)

I have been waiting years for this movie to hit the screens, and the last week or two has seemed like years, especially since the movie was released as it was only released in Australia today. But naturally I took my family to the very first screening in my hometown of Geelong.
Of my family I am the only one that has read the books, I actually own three copies of the books.
I had spent a large part of the last two weeks reading the user comments on this site. From this I was aware of some of the negatives and all of the positives. Because of this I made sure that I stressed two key points to my family, one is that the book had to be condensed to fit into a three hour movie and that this movie is unlike anything else from hollywood in that it truly is the first part of a trilogy. Not a complete story within itself as some people seemed to expect or want.
After now having seen the movie I realise that I truly had no idea just how hard it must have been for Jackson to have fitted this into a three hour movie. In my opinion for him to have included the full book and give enough time to develop the characters fully he would have needed 10 hours or more. One thing I note from other comments here is that very few people have commented on the fact that a number of the characters don't really get developed until the second book.
My own personal gripes with the movie, Galadriel was far from convincing in her part and was poorly displayed. The part where Frodo offers her the ring was rather pathetic and was not at all clear, my family asked afterwards about what was this "test" that she claimed to have passed. Secondly, there was no mention of why the black riders weren't chasing after the ring in the second half of the movie, after being swept away by the flood at the ford they totally disappeared from the story without a mention. The casting was excellent, with the exception of Galadriel and Elrond. Also, there was no real explanation of the council, everyone just showed up and it started. No background or introductions, who were these people? why were they there?
Being a Tolkein fan made it difficult for me to view this movie as being just a fantasy movie, I constantly found myself thinking "the book had it set out this way" or "hang on, they skipped about 18 years in the blink of an eye". I know the story very well as I first read the book around 16 years ago and I've read it 20 odd times since then, I lost count after the 13th reading. I've also read Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion.
Given that I have yet to view the movie without seeing just "the movie" I have yet to give it a rating, I doubt I would give it a 10 there are just a few too many minor flaws which I feel detract from the professionalism of this movie, like the hobbits changing in size or appearance from one shot to the next. In some scenes it was very clear that what was meant to be hobbits were actually child sized doubles, ie when Aragorn is holding two of them in his arms.
My family all thought it deserved 10 out of 10.