Before and after the movie

[Ithaeliel]

Before the movie came out, I had read The Hobbit and had thought it was pretty good (although I wasn't thinking, "This is exceptional! It's ingenious!"). That was when I thought it was just another pastless/futureless fairy-tale with no complete world to fall back on. Then I saw the movie and realized that it was connected to The Hobbit in a lot of ways, and seeing that there was a history behind the Ring, I became interested and wanted to learn more about it. I found this site in February (though I didn't join the forum till late April) and read the books in March. I just finished the Sil a couple of weeks ago, and I can now declare myself a fan of Tolkien's work [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

From what I've seen in the many discussions about, I would have to say that the level of intellect in the discussions has decreased somewhat, although not entirely. Here in the Books forum, I find a lot of good, thoughtful discussions to muse over and learn from. At least the forum has not lowered itself to having 60% of the topics lead down to, "OMG, Legolas is sooooo hot, he'z 2 fine 4U," or anything like that. Also, I've noticed that there must have been a huge inflow of members here because of the popularity of the movie.

Thanks for starting this thread, Child. It gives me a real insight to the changes of this forum over the past time.