I'm trying to stay optimistic. Maybe George will surprise us all this year. They're surely going to be playing the nostalgia card pretty hard this year.
I've never read The Lord of the Rings books. Is Return very faithful? After loving the shit out of the first 2 movies, I kind of felt like I wasn't "getting" something. I think I was expecting a LOT more time spent on Viggo Mortensen, becoming the Lawrence of Arabia of middle earth. There seemed to be a lot of time spent on "Sam is such a good friend". And "Sean Bean's dad sure is nuts".