I saw the film last evening at a 6:15 showing. I'll start out my little review here by saying that I am generally harsh on movies that I really like, especially the "epics" (Titanic, Episode 1, Pearl Harbor)
When I walked in, I too was nervous that the movie would not live up to the book. I walked out slightly disappointed, but still happy I had seen the movie. Here are my gripes.....Even though it was 3 hours long, the movie felt less than epic. A lot of the story was cut out and in its place was action and, unfortunately, romance. I liked how the book would stop periodically and sing a song. The movie did no such thing - it was in too big of a rush to get to the special effects. I thought near the beginning of the movie that they might stop every once in a while for a tune since Gandalf was singing on his little cart on the way to Hobbiton, but I was disappointed. The flight from the Shire was rushed, and I didn't like the way that Pippin and Merry joined up with Sam and Frodo. They treated the characters like children, or at least teenagers, but neglected to mention that Frodo was 50 years old when he started this adventure, and had waited 17 years after Bilbo's big party to leave Hobbiton. I know Hobbits aren't sophisticated, but do you really think at that age they'd still be stealing vegetables from the farmer's field? It seemed like they arrived in Bree the next day after leaving the Shire, which was also a fallacy.
Then Strider joined the group, but unlike in the book, the Hobbits had no assurance he was all right - they showed some resilience in the book, but were pretty naive to just follow him - where was Gandalf's letter that Butterbur forgot to send? Also in this place the Ringwraiths seemed too ceremonious - I expected them to be lightning fast warriors, not ghost-like floating things that hold their swords like they don't know what to do with them.
Then we come to Arwen, the hardly mentioned Elf-princess who suddenly saves the day in this new version of the story. SHe could have ben left out of the movie entirely, or the part could have been given to a pretty extra who would simply stand by Elrond and not say anything, but I imagine some politically correct producer said "We don't have enough women in this movie, and the one we do have is a spooky forest b!tch" so they had to add some big name actress and give her a few speaking lines and a chance to do something that she never did in the original story. Now, I like Liv Tyler, and I think she did an excellent job in this role - she seems the perfect fit for the role, but the role wasn't the perfect fit for the story. When the kissing scene came up, I just about lost it......WTF was that all about? I even said that to my friend I was sitting by - who wrote that sh!t? It wasn't JRR or anyone related to him, I'm sure of that. Elrond was awesome - unlike everyone else, I didn't really see him as Agent Smith, but I did have trouble getting past the little hair loops he had....and did anyone else think the pointy ears on the Elves were just a bit too Spock-ish?
Wow, there is so much more - Gandalf rocked, best character - hope he at least gets an Oscar nomination for it. Saruman was played well, but I agree with whoever said it before - Isengard was very "Temple of Doom"-ish to me. Sauron was a great character, very well done, and Isildur seemed to have the same appearance as the rest of the humans - hard to imagine that hairstyle stayed popular for 2500 years....
I liked the Moria sequence - very action packed - the Troll was great. OMG, the Balrog...was....amazing! Oscar for Best Villain. The orcs were done very well - what I didn't get was why did Aragorn just stand there in the doorway when they were across the bridge shooting arrows - he just stood there lamenting for Gandalf and he could have been shot - are they really that bad of a shot?
I only read about 3/4 of the way through the book before I saw this movie - I think I got to Lothlorien, but not to Galadriel. Anyway, after I had finished reading (well, re-reading, since I read all the books in high school) the movie seemed better, but it felt less like an epic novel than a Hollywood action flick. Especially one of the last lines "let's go hunt some orc..." Gimme a break.
BTW, I was laughing my ass off when Gimli made the dwarf-tossing reference....another example of cheesy humor and modern day moviemaking rules taking over a film supposed to be set in a parallel universe.
Conclusion:
I saw the Hollywood effect often in this film - they had to include a love interest, a few bad modern day cultural references, plenty of special effects, and the movie had to take a great pace to put in all the action and all the story. I think they could have made this more like the Dune miniseries that came out a while ago - if you haven't seen it, get it on DVD, very excellent - I think they could have made three 1.5 hour movies about each book and shown all three simultaneously for the die hard fans or one at a time for the others - could have made a lot of money that way. Overall, it was a very good movie - 3.5/4 stars in my book.