I think overall, big picture - yes.

I couldn't imagine any feasible situation in which I would watch any of them again, but I think they were ok the first time around.

They aren't good or bad, they just are.

Yes, they were good. I'm a bit wary of the Hobbit being stretched to 3 movies though (not sure if that's confirmed).

So anyway, the back half of our France trip was in the NW countryside. Here's an old Monolith thing (now in a farmer's field) that druids hung around a couple thousand years ago.


Not exactly by design, we ended up going through a lot of Middle-Earthy looking spots. I made Jessie take this picture of me.

Pretty much my feelings and I'm pretty sure I only saw 1 or 2 of them.

For a certain generation, they are probably akin to Star Wars for people my age--cheesy kids movies that will be fondly remembered as awesome but not hold up to grown up viewings (exception: nerds)

i cant not watch these if they're on tv. love these movies

It might have just been a coincidence of when I tried to watch them and unrelated to the movies, but all three times I tried to watch I fell asleep within the first half hour.

they're great. It's too much of an investment to rewatch them though. My kids sometimes have marathon sleepover nights with buddies, where they watch the director's cut of all three in succession. I think they're geeky enough to not even have marijuana involved.

I really like them. Read the books when I was in late elementary (Hobbit) into middle school (rest of 'em)--so the movies are a definite extension of my childhood. I own the extended cuts, and watch them probably once a year. I actually brought them to the ocean to watch back-to-back-to-back in one sitting, but the weather was too nice and the real world was calling my name too much.

I definitely think it rivals the best trilogies, and makes a case for some of the most arduous tasks for a filmmaker to under take. Besides the ridiculous shooting schedule and CGI required, not pissing off the fanboys definitely placed the bar high.

Cannot wait for the Hobbit.

Damn, now I'm thinking about going out and picking up the BluRays.

They're great. They had a few small problems, but I can't imagine a film adaptation of LOTR being any better.

They're visually a little dull. Maybe an animated version with really wild direction and enormous budget could be better. Something about 100x times better than what Ralph Bakshi did. This will never happen so I'll just be content with Peter Jackson's version.

There sure is a lot of killing for a kids movie.

Great movies that I don't really feel the need to ever watch again. The last one seemed to have an hour of extra stuff that it didn't need. I'll probably watch the hobbit, but hope that it's just one movie, not three.

I have found in the few samples I have seen that special effects laden movies tend to look like a school play in Blu-Ray. Anybody else notice this? HD looks great for sports but it reveals all the make-up, sets design, all the magic that makes us suspend our disbelief for movies.

spot on

i tried to start watching Dexter (as an example), but all the blood and gore looked so fake in HD i stopped watching.

everything looks like a soap opera

Love the trilogy. I'm in the minority who believe Jackson's films are better than the books as Jackson made the right cuts (exception: Gandalf's return to Isengard). IMHO, Tolkien's prose is very klunky (first half of Fellowship crawls) compared to Gene Wolfe, John (gospel of), et al. The Hobbit is his best book, so I also hope this is a single feature.

Haven't seen these on Blu-Ray yet, but I haven't picked up the too-much-detail in other effect-laden BluRays.

Especially if it's not shot for HD to make up for that. It has that weird thing where the aspect ratio is wrong so the camera is always adjusting.

Have you seen a special effects laden movie in a theater in the past few years?

Granted, I know we're talking about movies that are about a decade old here, but they were still made for the big screen. Blu-Ray doesn't "reveal" anything you don't see in the theater, especially not on digital projectors. It's an illusion created by newer TVs that are overly sharp and have really high refresh rates. They make everything feel "digital" and either like a "school play" or a video game. My guess is they're being built more for sports viewing and video games than for movies. And if they are made with movies in mind, it's for viewing them in 3D.

Beat me to it. Not sure what you're watching Seafoam, but I haven't seen this phenomena happening often. Granted, like Toots said, tv shows definitely can show its budget--but haven't seen it on a film scale.




Loogs, I think you might be speaking about a filming technique, which is more style than actual adjustments. Dexter is filmed with HD digicams and film, so its definitely not lo-fi. Most tv is shot HD nowadays. Something like the Wire, however wasn't--which is why you'll probably not see a BluRay of it.

I've noticed the make-up, etc, especially when I first got HD. However, when I reset my TV away from the factory settings most of that went away. My TV is an Insignia and every so often after a power outage or something it will reset it--I think it's got a menu option with "motion" in its name.

I never read the books. Went to see the first one and was just pissed off at the end that I sat through three hours of not a lot happening to get a "to be continued" at the end. Yes, I knew it was a trilogy, but most trilogies at least stand on their own as individual movies and at least the first one totally failed that to me. I guess they're OK, but I'm just not so into the genre and I didn't think these transcended that. I did have a lovely day once when I was left with nothing to do and these things on a movie channel and a bag of weed. But otherwise, I mostly found them boring.

I picked up a 3 x DVD box set of Return of The King in a fancy box at a car boot last year
and asked the guy how much it was and he said 20p - I said no way, you must be joking etc and
he just said he'd seen it and was never gonna watch it again so thats all it was worth to him.
I saw it at the cinema of course but this box set jobbie is still sitting unwatched on a shelf
so he was probably right after all

I've attempted to watch the first one 4 times, I'm asleep within 45 minutes each time...BORING

i fell asleep in the theater during the first one. i've probably seen all three but i can't remember a single moment. hate lord of the rings and the books all stunk too. same thoughts on harry potter.

i was pretty into them when they came out and think they are pretty good. the effects/set design is great, but fuck, some of the acting is just horrendous. i mean, the source material isnt exactly A+.

FYI, the 15-disc extended version Blu-Ray set is on sale on Amazon right now for 40 bucks.

I never bought these before so I decided to grab this. It'll probably be a few years before I get around to watching them again, but I'm sure when the kids are a little older they'll get watched plenty.

Your kids might be like "what's a blu-ray?"