Twenty years? That makes me feel old. Then again, it does feel like it was an aeon ago.
I remember very well being 11 and coming out of the cinema after seeing
FOTR for the first time and feeling somehow... underwhelmed. I guess my expectations had been higher, or maybe I was just a little dazed after having been kicked out of Middle-earth so soon and knowing it would be a full year until the next movie - a lifetime for a kid. Also, LOTR had been a huge part of my childhood since I was maybe six years old, so of course no movie could compare to the universe I had built in my imagination. This was the first Tolkien adaptation I could (to any degree) watch critically as an adaptation, and I'm not sure I liked the novel experience.
Fast forward to 2002 and 2003, I was the worst sort of teenage book purist, and probably horrible company for watching
TTT or
ROTK - everything that was different than in the book was obviously WRONG and boy there was a lot of those things, starting from colours of horses. But I still had fun watching the films - they were entertaining and engrossing, and suddenly I could drag (more of) my friends with me to Middle-Earth. Not to mention how much amusement the early teen passtime of fangirling over the characters/actors provided. (I distinctly remember a friend reading a headline in a magazine "Orlando Bloom has charisma" and being agonized because she thought it was some kind of an illness.
)
But yeah... twenty years, and I can't deny those movies have had an effect on my life, even if the effect of the book is much much bigger. Over the years, my opinion on the films has fluctuated and it still does - PJ&co managed to hit some notes absolutely right, the music is lovely, the visuals and the cast mostly great... but there are also times I rewatch those movies and shake my head at how wrong they also got some things, or the sheer lack of subtlety in the script. But the more Tolkien adaptations of any type that pop up, one has to admit it's not easy adapting Tolkien, and tip the hat at Peter Jackson a little more. (Also one has to say, for instance, that the CGI looks remarkably well aged compared to many even much newer movies.) I hope to see at least one another big, ambitious (and hopefully very different) movie adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings in my lifetime, but I think it says something about those movies that even after 20 years, nobody seems to be seriously thinking there's market for one yet.
Cheers!