Aah Desdemona, you said a lot of what I'd been feeling about the movie. LOTR the book has a lot more suspense and build to it than the movie did. I really liked a lot of the scenery of the movie and thought they did a good job there (although Rivendell is a populated place full of music and elves and instead we got an empty castlish thingy). I thought that the storytelling was screwed up and jerky. They made it more Conan like, or comic book style. Focussing on events instead of relationships; what happens instead of how it is told. In the book we learn the why after the action, which makes a lot of the action scarier. In the movie they handed the why out on a plate with a side of fries, probably MacDonalds, and stopped the need for thinking. I was ultimately quite disappointed in the movie.