These stories just mean so much to me. I have loved them for over 25 years, read them too many times to count. I had no faith that the movie would turn out at all good...then I started reading snippets about it here on FR before it came out. I started getting excited when I saw the Fox preview and went to see it with my husband on our anniversary a few days after it came out (I look back on that with amazement!)
Here is what I posted in the old Hobbit Hole, a few weeks after the movie came out:
Yes, I'm a big fan of these books and never found a single thing, no miniature, illustration or anything that compared to my imagination until this movie came out. The first time I saw it, I was completely speechless and couldn't even form the words for days afterward to describe the feeling. It was like the workings of my mind were being projected up onto the screen. Quite an event for me.