Did anyone see Lord of the Rings last night?

for me personally i always turn return of the king off just after the scene where the elven ship sails off to the undying lanRAB. I can't bear to watch the last scene with sam as it makes my bloody teeth itch.
 
I agree. That part of the book, in movie terms, would seem superfluous and not really needed, so they had to resolve that plot thread elsewhere in the movie. Just a shame they didn't actually include it in the theatrical versions.
 
Yeah, there were too many endings to the third film. I wanted them to just get it over and done with so I could go take a piss.

I guess they had too many loose enRAB to tie up. Still, it could have been done better.
 
If you aren't totally amazed by the films than its best to stay away from the book which is long winded and boring imo.
It would be more interesting if it was even slightly complex but it is one long travelogue with random plot lines that go nowhere. As soon as I realised that the dwarvish folk songs add nothing to the plot I began to skip chunks just to finish it.

The films take the basic story line (which is good) and ignore the mind numbing elements
 
The books as written are completely unfilmable. They've cut stuff and changed a lot, but I feel it's almost all for the better.

In oarticular they re-structured the Two Towers a lot. In the book one half of it follows Frodo and Sam, and the other one is about the Fellowship. That was slightly odd in the book, but simply couldn't work on-screen. They very skillfully cut both stories together, and sort out the timelines between them, which are actually very tricky to keep straight in the book. You had to remember what the other characters did several hundred pages ago, at the same time.

I also agree about the tidying up of the end of the story. However the end of the last movie really does last a very long time. It's got at least 3, possibly 4 endings ;)
 
It is better balanced. The extra material fills out the characters and it actually feels shorter overall because it's better paced.

That's for the first film, which I think is most improved by the extended edition. For the other two, the director seemed to put stuff in for the fans regardless of whether it helped the movie, so the improvement is less.

I also like the first film most for other reasons. It has the best journey, in several senses of the word. We see a greater variety of locations, including The Shire (hobbits), Rivendell (elves), Lothlorien (different elves, and they are different), Moria (dwarves). We see Isengard before and after. It's also more of a journey into darkness, because it starts off bright and cheerful where the others start off dark.It has most of my favourite scenes.

I'm tempted to say the first film sticks closest to the book. OK, Bombadil goes and some characters are combined, but it works pretty well. It's mostly deletions rather than additions. The second film is almost a travesty for me because so much new is added, and the new is rarely as good as what Tolkien conceived.
 
The extended edition is a far better film, when i watch the cinema version of LOTR i thought it was crap. IMO the books are slightly pretentious and the forward is the most self obsessed and once again pretentious text i've ever had the misfortune to read.
The 3 extended movies are fantastic though since the filler crap has been taken out from the book
 
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