Oh Yeah! We went to see on the day after it came out. We waited for the two older boys to get home from college so we could all see it together, however, Sir SuziQ, and both of the boys had seen it on the first day also. SSQ went with a group from work, and the boys went with friends at school on the first day.
I enjoyed it tremendously! There are big discussions in the Hobbit Hole about various characters and situations, whether or not they were enough like Tolkien wrote them, etc. Variations, notwithstanding, I thought it was a tremendous movie, and will probably go three or four more times with our daughter, who is the other Tolkien geek in the family!
They have to leave some things out, unfortunately, or we'd be watching a very long movie!
Have you seen the extended DVD with all the neat interviews of the cast, Suzi? The extra scenes in the extended version make it much more interesting, IMO, and keep it from going from one action scene to another. You also get to hear some of the songs from the books. When Aragorn sings, it's pretty cute! hehe
My daughter attends Marquette and the entire original written works of Tolkein are in the library there, so she's seen them. Did you know that, lawgirl? They're right there in Milwaukee!!
OH.....Miss Marple....that reminds me......on Monday night, our whole family watched 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice!!! It was the A&E version that daughter #1, Jane Austin addict, owns. It is absolutely FABULOUS!! In 6 hours you get so much more involved in the real Austin characters. Have you, perchance, seen it?
Maybe the LOTR trilogy should just be 18 hours long! :o)