loved it...
I went to see it the night it came out in NZ, and had just finished re-reading ROTK a couple of days beforehand. What I\'ve found in the films is that even though certain scenes are altered/deleted/added, that the essence of the story is there. To be honest I never saw the point of Bombadil, while he\'s an important character in Middle Earth he\'s irrelevant to the story of the Ring. I don\'t for one second think that the entire storyline is justified just to show how the hobbits got some swords... It\'s a nice bit of history for the world, and in the appendices there\'s some speculation about whose tomb it is that\'s all very interesting, but really just a long diversion from the meat of the story.
While I wasn\'t overly fond of Arwen (never liked the character much in the books), it was important that she show up occasionally because let\'s face it, Eowyn was so much more appealing

. The shallowness of Eowyn\'s feelings for Aragorn is played up much more in the books than in the film (she\'s less interested in him than in glory and kingship or at least a dramatic death), so in the films it seems like she\'d be much more Aragorn\'s kinda girl. Although he did grow up with Arwen so who knows.
The only things that did bug me were a couple of effects glitches (to be expected I guess when somethings being worked on to the 11th hour - TT had a couple too that were fixed by the time the DVD came out), and the scene where apparently Arwen\'s going to die if he doesn\'t win... Bah. I much preferred the book version where Elrond got all over-protective Dad and said she couldn\'t possibly marry anyone who wasn\'t king of the world...
Didn\'t have a problem with the emotional hobbit scenes - I think it\'s perhaps something most modern movies have conditioned us for, that every intense emotion has a sexual level - well, bollocks. They grew up together, went off and had incredibly traumatic experiences, and then found out the other wasn\'t dead/wasn\'t evil/the world was saved etc. If that doesn\'t deserve a bit of hugging and crying then nothing does

.
My hopes for the extended version are more of the background stuff with Denethor (like his use of one of the Palantirs), maybe something of the Houses of Healing stuff with Faramir and Eowyn (which while not being strictly necessary is kinda nice anyway, although a bit silly - shieldmaiden to domestic chick in two easy steps! you too can do this for only 4 payments of 19.99...), and Christopher Lee\'s Saruman scene because he\'s cool and it was planned to start off the 3rd film (according to the TT background stuff), so it\'s definitely been filmed.
I hope they didn\'t bother with the Scouring, because while it was a cool scene in the book it was also part of about a third of the book that was spent wrapping things up in a slow and methodical manner. For the film I think it would suck - major climax, resolution, peaceful ending... then another, smaller climax? I think it would completely mess up the flow. The books didn\'t *have* flow so it\'s not an issue there.
I\'m still unconvinced about the Warg attack in TT, but cmon - it\'s a story, it\'s not sacrilege to change stuff. People act like Tolkien was some kind of sacred cow - heck, he went back and changed The Hobbit concepts for Gollum after writing LOTR. PJ made it a great movie. I\'ve *seen* the Bakshi cartoon that was faithful to the book, and it was pretty dull.
Anyway, as far as trilogies go, I felt much happier after this one than after the Matrix (really enjoyed the movies, but it felt a bit flat), and I think perhaps George Lucas is going to have some trouble making the next Star Wars film beat this one

.