I was a great fan of the lord of the rings. i read the book (that giant one with the 3 movies in it), watched the movies, bought the movies, the cd's, extra books (so, do you think you know the lord of the rings), many card of the fellowship of the ring, and the two towers,plus magazines and when i bought the return of the king i got 3 wallpapers (because i bought it before the official day that would come to the stores.
The return of the king was the one i loved and touched me the most, and i watched 3 times when released and thousand times after buying it.
Everything i saw about it, i wanted to have, it was really a fever for me.
I loved Frodo and Legolas, it was insane how many pics i took of both of them.
even though now i am not that fanatic anymore, i still watch the movies and read the book when i am feeling bored, one of the greatest movies that i've ever seen.

AVATAR: i didn't watch when it was released but heard a lot. Everything i had to search in the internet to read in my language, but i just felt a real interest when the dvd was released where i am now and i watched at a bookstore.
When i got there it was in the scene when Jake is attacked by that thanator, so i started watching and loved what i was seeing, so i got the dvd (39.90)--> real, not dollars.
The only thing that disappointed me on avatar was the fact that there was no special features (i had to watch youtube).
Avatar is one of the movies i watch the most nowadays (but i didn't feel like when i watched the lord of the rings), i am not a 100% avatar fan like i was of Peter Jackson's trilogy.

Avatar was a rip off of about five stories starting with the Smurfs!

Then there was a spattering of Chronicles of Narnia.

Toss in a hint of Dances With Wolves,

Give it a hint of Apocalypse now, Pochahontas, and Starship Troopers and you got a classic adventure thriller!

Lord of the Rings was great. There is no way to draw parallels with other stories. Avatar was eh... Not all that. Great visuals but visuals only carry a story so far.

OH BTW, add Little Big Man, Apache, and any "Rapers of the land" tree hugger story to toss in on top of it and yowie! You get Avatar.

Wall-E also was not all that and had a hidden message in it. The main character was too monosyllabic. With the degree of technology needed to make a robot that functional it could have had a very good vocabulary processor and could have said more than "Wall E!" over and over.

Happy Feet also SUCKED HORRIBLY! Why didn't Happy Feet get his adult colors? BECAUSE HE WOULD HAVE LOST HIS BOW TIE AND TUXEDO LOOK BEING AN ADULT!!! SUCK FEST SUCK FEST SUCK FEST! OH the evil humans are despoiling the Antarctic and dancing Penguins are going to save the day! Yeah, From a frikken zoo somewhere!


Avatar could have been better but it fell short for me in a couple of ways...

One was the aliens were patterned WAY too closely to Native Americans. I mean the writers could have made them more cat like and eaters of raw meat along with more savanna lion like attitudes like males posturing to one another upon meeting in an aggressive fashion and females being defensively aggressive. They were just too pseudo human to me.

Another was if the humans wanted too they could have MOPPED up the aliens. The story sounded too much like America late 1800s early 1900s (frontier days).

Also the back story of the "Special Element" the greedy humans wanted or themselves. Something like that would have led to the decimation of the aliens in the first place knowing how humans today act.

Apples and oranges I would say for taste in movies, aye???

I've been a big Lord Of The Rings since I was a kid. I've read the books many times over the years, along with The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion several times. I remember watching the animated The Hobbit on TV when it originally aired back in the 70's, and even the animated Return Of The King. Ralph Bakshi's Lord Of The Rings I watched over and over on VHS. But Peter Jackson's Trilogy is definitely the best screen adaptation we'll probably see.

If you ever get the chance, the BBC Radio Drama version of the Lord Of The Rings is excellent. It was produced back in 1981. Ian Holm who plays Bilbo in Jackson's movies, is the voice of Frodo in the radio version.

You can draw parallels with other stories for LOTR since it was heavily influenced by Wagner's Ring Cycle- the One Ring in LOTR is basically the same as the magical ring from Wagner's opera. And Tolkien was influenced by The Song of the Nibelungs, plus many other poems, songs, and legends that Tolkien borrowed here and there from.


But I'm totally with you on Avatar, Andy. I was very underwhelmed with the movie.

In defense of Avatar; Michelle Rodriguez always looks good.

That's part of why I like the killer dog flick The Breed