I was only disappointed in ROTK and have decided that I no longer hate it. And I never hated its predecessors. Fellowship is one of the three or four best movies I’ve ever seen, and TTT, while not great, is very good, and in some ways the perfect DVD movie. And I also love Jackson’s King Kong, though I wouldn’t call it better, exactly, than the Faye Wray version. It’s just different.
Hey wow, this is exactly what I think about the movies. It seems like most people think they got better and better, whereas I thought exactly the opposite.
Also: Too much hobbit crying.
I actually thought TTT was the weak link, though neither of the later two is anywhere near as good as Fellowship.
The theatrical version of TTT was the weakest of the three. The extended DVD version was much better IMHO. The extended DVD version of ROTK was also better than the theatrical version, but either version was better than the theatrical release of TTT. But I agree that FOTR was the best movie of the three.
Just throwing some love out for Perlman.
Decent actor, but when you’re not real handsome and trying to work in Hollywood, you can use all the kindheartedness you can get.
Don’t forget, he’s got the third best Gravitas Voice in Hollywood, after Morgan Freeman and Patrick Stewart.
Sure enough, “del Toro has something in mind for Ron Perlman.” 
(Old news, but I just now happened upon it.)
I bet he’ll be one of the trolls. And they’ll make it into a 30 minute long adventure, instead of a 2 minute game of ventriloquism.
I agree. Though I liked the books in opposite order.
TTT is, as I said, the perfect DVD movie, because it chops up so that you can follow the story thread you like better. Its biggest flaw is that it screws up the movie that has to follow. The siege of Helms’ Deep is MUCH more interesting than the Battle of Pelennor Fields.
Also, for some reason, they refuse to show Miranda Otto in the bath. Bastards.
FoTR, much as I love it, is not a good DVD movie, because it doesn’t chop up well. Which is not a criticism, just an obervation.
Wow, I’d say the extended version of TTT is the best of the three movies, including the theatricals of all of them.
De gustibus non est disputandum. (I hope I spelled that right.)
I agree with this.
I’m so excited about these movies, and it’s great to see McKellen and the rest on board.
I’d boycott if Sir Ian wasn’t in them. He IS Gandalf. Made the trilogy for me.
The Hobbit is an altogether different book than LOTR: it’s a child’s book… I wonder how well they will adapt it.
I read it after LOTR and for me it’s a more “intimate” story. Sauron hasn’t yet revealed itself and the world isn’t such a dark place.
The casting will have to be perfect, after all there are lot’s of dwarves.
Also I hope that Benicio will improve the artwork: one of my biggest dissapointments were Minas Tirith (I imagined it a lot different: bigger, fuller of life, etc).
Meh, CGI’s come a long way. They can just clone Rhys-Davies 12 times over.
Guillermo! 
I used to feel that way, but I’ve matured (or perhaps just aged) since then, and come 'round. Movies are different than books, and I shouldn’t expect similarity. We’ve got lots of examples of when an original story is adapted to other artistic media: book or play or story to movie is perhaps the most obvious, but no one objects that Tchaikowski’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” ruins the play.
When a favorite book of mine is adapted to play or film, I no longer expect the movie to reproduce the experience of the book. I am satisfied if the movie is a worthwhile experience in and of itself. (Which I thought RETURN OF THE KING was, but LION, WITCH AND WARDROBE was not.)
Jackson was pretty damn faithful to JRRT’s descriptions and drawings of Minas Tirith, you know. A city which was once much more populous, with much more settlement and commerce out on the fields of Pellenor, connected to the even larger and more important city of Osgiliath, with city of Minas Ithil in the distance.
But due to the decline of the men of the west and ravages of Sauron and others, it was much diminished.
Yeah. I thought Jackson’s Minas Tirith perfectly embodied the “once great city that has fallen on hard times” - and without resorting to the usual brown-and-gray decayed look that most directors would have. Instead, the architecture of the city looks as grand as it would have during its height. Its diminished nature is communicated more subtly, in the shockingly small civilian population, the absence of young men who aren’t soldiers, the vast, empty halls, and the haunted looks on its inhabitants’ faces.