QUOTE (Socrates @ Nov 29 2008, 07:59 PM)

I wound up voting LOTR, though the movies are vastly inferior to Tolkien's books. (Though they're still an impressive piece of fantasy film-making in their own right.)
However, I'll admit that by the time the entire movie trilogy was over in the theaters, I suffered from a bit of hobbit-fatigue.
Some major downsides to the movie LOTR were Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom prancing around in that girly blonde wig, and the miles of of footage of Aragorn and Liv Tyler in her big pointy Vulcan-ears pining away for each other. (It's one thing to strip down from a lengthy novel to make a movie move along; another to add tons of slow-moving sappy coagulated milk nowhere found in the source book).
If it weren't for Part 3, The Godfather Trilogy would give LOTR a strong run for its money. And as the original Star Wars trilogy played a large part in my young childhood, I'll always have a soft spot for it (despite Lucas' later CG atrocities).
Though comparing a crime drama to two fantasy adventures is kind of comparing apples and oranges.
Wow, we agree on something!

FOTR was good. The other two were terrible, IMHO. Viggo Mortensen was a terrible Aragorn, he just didn't have the necessary gravitas. I also disliked the "artistic liberties" that were taken with the books, including Aragorn coming to the "rescue" of Boromir at the latter's last stand, Aragorn being dragged off a cliff by a warg, the aforementioned scenes with Arwen. Basically, I just didn't care for the Aragorn character, and that gutted the movies for me. Viggo Mortensen was to Aragorn what Hayden Christensen was to Darth Vader, with the attendant impact on their respective movies.