The comments are pretty funny. And by funny I mean sort of sad.

For whatever reason, I decided to watch Fellowship of the Rings on DVD on Sunday*. It's not bad, but I think 90% of my enjoyment when I first saw it was due to the years of anticipation and respect for Jackon's audacity in filming the trilogy. This announcement doesn't get me very excited.

*That's a lie, I do know the reason: my dad called me and mentioned he was watching it on one of the HD channels, so I got the hankering to unwrap the unopened DVD set I have.

Ah well, it was going to happen. I kind of wish it weren't. I respect everyone's right to love the Peter Jackson movies, but in my humble opinion, the FotR was a better than okay adaptation, but Two Towers and Return of the King were Peter Jackson's "fanfic" version that had little to do with Tolkien's intent.

Since The Hobbit was my absolute favorite book as a kid, and still ranks pretty high on my list, I think I will give these movies a pass.

Er, I probably should have said pass on these movies. I don't give them a pass at all.

I loved what he did with the trilogy, to be honest. I grew up on these books, and it's like he reached into my head and scooped out what I always imagined the Shire to look like. I just thought they were great.

I'm now really excited to see this, too!

I'm with kellydammit. He may not have gotten everything in there that Tolkien intended, but it was a damn fine interpretation.

I loved the trilogy. Love the trilogy. Love the 12+hour extended edition trilogy.

But, the trilogy was pretty lite on the hobbity parts, with a preference for big sweeping battles and their MASSIVE (the acronym, not the adjective) simulations.

I am excited and a bit anxious to see what they will do with a much, much smaller-scale fantasy, that frankly isn't anything like "Narnia," "The Golden Compass," "The Seeker", etc.

I agree, muddgirl, but I thought the non-battle stuff was where the trilogy really managed to shine. The depictions of the Shire, the elves, Galadrial, all that is what I walked out thinking of, not the big battles. I think he can do it.

Two movies?

I'd love to see The Hobbit brought to the big screen. Dwarves, finally! But what the heck is the second movie about? What happens between The Hobbit and LOTR? Isn't that time covered in like, a page, at the end of The Silmarillion? (And where the hell is my copy of The Silmarillion?)

On MeFi I said The Hobbit II is probably about Gandalf, the Council of Wizards, and the rise of Sauron at Dol Guldur.

I expect it's also got a Shire component, though. Gonna be hard to balance that stuff.

Huh. I wonder if we'll actually get to see Sauron. And assuming he's not CGI, what actor would you cast?

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I realized that the first movie is probably going to be The Shire through the imprisonment by the Mirkwood elves, and the second movie will be all about the mountain and the dwarvish politics.

King Kong was 1.5 hours too long. Return of the King was two endings too long. This version of the Hobbit looks to be one entire movie too long.

The one thing that still bothers me about the LotR movies are the changes from the books like having a bunch of elves go die for no apparent reason in TTT, having Arwen take Glorfindel's place, etc. And Liv Tyler being in them to begin with, I despise her.

I read some time back that if it ever got off the ground, they were writing a bunch of new material to make the Hobbit take up two movies and make it more exciting for the big screen and that just sounds like disaster. Sure they might be entertaining but I am doubting they will remotely resemble the book and therefore will ultimately be a disappointment to anybody that is a Tolkien fan to begin with rather than just a fan of the movies.

The #1 thing that bugs me about the LoTR movies is how the ghosties just sweep through at the end, Deus ex Machina style, and win the battle. Lame.

The #2 thing is how lame and wussy they make Theoden. In the book, after he's healed, he's all "Strap it on, lets win this thing!" but in the movie he's all "Wah, I'm old and too tired to do anything!" And in the movie, he gives the "End of the world" speech at the beginning of the battle, before they'd even started fighting, while in the book Eomer gets to give the speech after he thinks they've already lost. Indeed, Eomer's "last ride" is quite possibly the most thrilling part of the book.

But still, I agree with kelly that the Shire parts far outshined my wildest expectations. Basically, The Return of the King should have been less-tampered with, but the other ones were OK.