Good points, Desdemona. I have to agree with many of them, although I think it's quite a good movie, and one that is respectful of the tale.

You are right that the story is so immense that it simply cannot be equaled on film. Well-written words are more effective, because each of us creates inner mental images when we read them that cannot be matched by any film maker's craft.

This is why I regard music videos as an artistic disaster, by the way...which might better have never happened. But that's another discussion.

I agree that shorter battle scenes and more evening conversations and gatherings would have been a good idea. To really cover the book adequately, each third of the trilogy could encompass about 12 hours of film, I should think. That would allow time to fill in all the details of character and circumstance.

I wasn't disappointed in the hobbits, I thought they were exceptionally well done.

Can a single movie ever match a great book? Well, maybe, but it very rarely happens.

This movie is a more than respectable attempt to, but I agree it cannot equal the book in impact (I remember my first reading of it well).

- LH