That's not the best film I've seen. (The best is 'Stalker' by A. Tarkovsky). I'd give FOTR 9 or 8, if Tolkien meant nothing to me. But being amazed by his books can't suffice to rate this film 10. There are more reasons. I've always believed the books could only be made into slow, subtle films with accent on acting, not effects, preferentially by Russians. So I was afraid to see some sort of 'Xena', knowing that FOTR was an effect-packed action film. But the only wish after the first viewing was to have a ten-minute break and to watch the 2nd part ... and then the 3rd one (cliff-hanger ending fulfilled its purpose). Amazing cinematography, music, quite natural-looking special effects, good acting, and that's not all. There's extraordinary attention to accurate detail everywhere, from costumes to Elvish. That makes possible multiple viewing with new discoveries. Treatment of the story is really good. Alterations help to visualize some points. Excluding something shows knowledge of the limits of action film (or we might have had Jar Jar Tom). Expanding the role of Arwen isn't just an attempt to attract more audience with a love story or to please women (I'd be pleased only by a film not worse than 'The Matrix', where a woman would be the main hero). Arwen's storyline is very important in respect to the symmetry of symbolical layer of the plot, although not as explicatively told as Frodo's. A battle 3000 years ago and episode in Mt Doom aren't just a pretext to show special effects - they are crucial to the plot. The structure of books itself is based on mythology. A novel should have an unpredictable ending. The end of a myth might be clear from the beginning. LOTR tricks reader into thinking it's a novel, although it is more like a myth from that point of view. (SPOILER?) Simple algorithm applied to those old events would show one the culmination of the story (END). Hence FOTR is really worth the book it is based on. However, the book is subtler, more poetic, conveys more ideas. It's nice lines in the film are taken from the book or written in the same style. By the way, the language in the books is amazing. It was the first thing I fell in love with after reading them. Never thought English could be so interesting, rich, expressive, and able to convey so subtle shades of emotion! But sure there was an advertising mistake. FOTR should be marked as 'Part 1' demonstrably, because not everybody knows that's not all. The 2nd part might be even better, and the 3rd one should rock the world!
