Misses it's reason for being

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2009)

All that can be said about the gorgeous effects in LOTR has already been mentioned: it's a pinnacle of film technology and shows that everything is now possible to portray (with enough funding).
Yet I left first the Cinema & then the extended DVD version feeling cheated out of the emotions I had felt from the books.
Jackson's 2nd film leaves too much to tell in the third, yet he still squanders time on strange scenes that were not in the book instead of focusing on the journey for the Hobbits.
For me the books have their flaws: (1) The prose is unnecessarily flowery and expansive (2) the characters are about as black or white as the world is according to George W Bush, no nuance there but it was a product of WW2 so it's not hard to see why.
To me the central theme is that of a journey, not only to Mordor & back but a mental journey for characters. Frodo grows beyond the confines of the Shire. Sam the boy finds the 'man' within him. Merry & Pippin the pranksters become powerful and can easily overthrow the somewhat diminished Saruman.
We still get Frodo's & to an extent Sam's story, but Merry & Pippin are left out. I can take (with a touch of rancor) turning dwarfs into comic characters & that there is not enough room for everything, but for me the central 4 Hobbits needed more of their story told.
This movie is still a 7 or 8 and a must see, and although I am very aware that wishing more from this simple fairly tale probably doesn't reflect well on my life, still I feel it could have been much more and I can't help yearning for that missing bit.