Spoiler Alert!

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

But I have to admit that watching the first Hobbit movie definitely spoiled the following two for me--I haven't had any interest in seeing them.

Heehee. I'm only a little disappointed that those movies weren't spoiled for me sooner.


My LOTR timetable went approximately like this (give or take a year in age):

5 y/o: My mother reads LOTR aloud to me in Russian. I understand very little because I can't even keep track of the nine names of the Fellowship (I recall asking her at the end of the Fellowship who was Boromir. Somehow I thought he was one of the bad guys - I think I mixed him up with Sauron or Saruman - and I was glad that he died).

6-9 y/o: I watch the movies. I understand very little because my English is horrible, but it helps clarify the basic plot. Unfortunately, it also implants several physical images into my head.

9-12 y/o: I reread LOTR several times, know what goes where, who is who, etc. Movie images still stick.

12-13 y/o: I become obsessed with LOTR and won't read anything else. I read the First age stuff and The Hobbit. I try to memorize every detail of everything in the books. I join the Downs.

13-15 y/o: I am on a quest to reread everything in English and augment my Tolkien with non-canonic material.



As of now, if I concentrate, I am able to override the movie images of LOTR with more accurate ones. This isn't a problem for TH - my mental pictures were too set to be perturbed by the movies. But I've noticed even recently that occasionally little things like the appearance and number of orcs, or like the looks or voices of some characters, are still closer to the movie than the book. So in that sense, the movies spoiled the book for me, but not in the plot or character development sense.