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The Hobbit, was pretty good, at least to my young self, as I haven't seen it since. But, the LotR movies - I did not like those. The whole effect of the marching armies of orcs being real people with orc faces drawn on really bothered me for some reason.

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Hmm - I don't remember what the orcs looked like (I thought they looked like orcs, but I will try to find a picture somewhere...)

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Here's an example of what I'm talking about. It's a style thing. Part of the movie is hand-drawn and part of the movie was drawing on top of live action.

Here's another example of the orcs.

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Really?! Geez - I don't remember this at all... I mostly just remember Sam's becoming megalomaniac because of the ring, Frodo's "nine fingers" song, and so on... Those orcs do look a bit unorcish...

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The review that I got the second link from put it quite well, the first hour with the traditional animation and the last 1/2 of the second movie (The Return of the King) were pretty dcent, but the last half of the first and the first half of the second were pretty awful.

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Hmm - I think I always missed certains parts of the animation (I always caught it on when it had already been running for a time)...

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I watched them as a reward in grade school. It was for all of the kids who had not missed any days for the month, if I recall correctly. We go to see the Hobbit, then the next month the Lord of the Rings and the next month the Return of the King. Unfortunately, the reward movie was not optional if you qualified, so I couldn't stay in my class for the last one. The ending made up for it though and I did decide that I would still read the books after all. :D

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And thus grade school was the impetus for manikus to delve into the world of medieval fantasy, and then AD&D, and then FRUA, and then... DC. :D Thanks, grade school!

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:D

That, and my mom didn't discourage me. Though, she would have preferred it if I had been into adventure stories (in a real-world setting) or sci-fi (which I kinda was/am, but not as much as fantasy).

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I don't know why, but medieval fantasy always had the most draw for me - real-life is too, well, boring, and sci-fi was too imaginary (everyone had their own slant to it).

Medieval fantasy had a real-life basis (and thus continuity of a sort), while having cool aspects like magic, dragons, and such :D (Dragons are cooler than aliens...)

Incidentally, I bought the Spelljammer boxed set when I was young, but I never could make sense of it... :D