The thing with the trees was cartoonish; they needed to think about that one a bit more. The orcs and some of the monsters look almost believable, the Golom character was fabulous, but some of the things you see, such as the Belrog, still look cartoonish and the movie seems too busy at times, i.e. too many weirdies flying around.
Moreover, the plot and basic story do not really seem altogether plausible. By way of contrast, the thing which really jumps out at you watching Reservoir Dogs or a couple of Quintan Tarrantino's films is the way in which the story strikes you as SO plausible that you walk out wondering what keeps stuff like that from happening more often and, in that sense, Tarrentino's villians are a whole lot more believable than Tolkein's. I mean, Marcellus Wallace just has it all over Sauron and Sauroman.
Aside from that, the Hollywood lefties basically hate Quintan Tarrantino to pieces, and the idea of Pulp Fiction being named one of the hundred best films of the 20'th century totally fried their minds as I hear it.
And from there you proceed to compare it to.....Quentin Tarrantino. BWHAHAHAHA..
We are talking about literature here, you are talking....trash.
Now, have you read down through this thread? Have you even READ the book?
Tarrrantino? "Reservoir Dogs?" "Pulp Fiction?"
Vulgar trash masquerading as cinema art....rather like that desecratedMadonna painting exhibited in New York a couple of years ago.
The post-modern movement is dead as of September 11. Tolkien's Middle Earth calls to the human spirit in a way that Tarrantino cannot even fathom.
I agree with that. I expected to see a forest.
There were some variations from the book that I didn't think were necessary, too. . . like Fararamir's character which was more noble in the book than on the screen.