I think Bill, as well as others on this thread, need to calm down, but he does have a point.
The movies
are enjoyable, yes, but they are not spectacular from a more critical standpoint. There really is little character development, many of the points that are supposed to be moving are built out of sentimental cliches and amplified by overripe music, and the pacing is bad. Although, on the last point, I have to disagree with Bill; I thought that (in RotK), too much was happening, not too little. Every 10 minutes it felt like a new conflict was being resolved, so I would have liked to see a little more downtime. A lack of action in TTT may not be entirely the movie's fault; a lot of that came over from the book, which I always thought was the most slowly paced and uneventful (i.e. boring, if that's what you're reading for) of the three.
The movies weren't as stellar as some people would like to say they are. Neither were the books, for that matter. (Yet I enjoy them both anyway; don't get me wrong.)
As to whoever was responding to my earlier comments, I never said anything about the purpose of books being to prove some people are smart because they 'get' them. On the contrary, I don't particularly enjoy modernist authors like Joyce that are so cryptic you need several degrees to understand them. On the other hand, I don't think that the sole purpose of books should be surface-level enjoyment. There's something else to be appreciated in LotR, namely the artistry with which Tolkien put together his Arda. Just don't read LotR if you expect simple enjoyment of the plot and so on; it won't work. Don't read
Heart of Darkness expecting that, either, but don't suppose to claim that it isn't great literature.
er, I'm lost now, so I hope I said everything that I wanted to say.
