I really liked seeing Tolkein's book "come to life," to be cliché, in
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I don't agree with
some of the changes they made in the plot, but they did a great job
visually. It does seem a bit dated, but so do the books.
I've wanted to see LotR since it came out, but I wanted to read the books first, and I didn't do that until a couple years ago, and by then I didn't have time to watch old movies anymore. I tried to read The Hobbit, and either it was the most boring book I've ever read, or it was one of maybe two books that was so terrible I didn't finish it; I can't remember which. Either way, I won't be seeing that series (and it's not supposed to be good, anyway).
I feel like an unusual amount of memes came out of this series, like "one does not simply walk into Mordor." And that wasn't even a big line in the movie. Why did it become so popular?
This movie has a weird look to it, like it was shot on old-school film, and it has a weird old-school fantasy vibe to it in general. But so did the books -- they were written in 1937-49, after all -- so maybe they were going for authenticity. The opening part in Hobbiton reminded me of Willow.
