Guys, quit being snarky and post constructively. Thanks.
I agree with these sentiments. Another thing that occurred to me is that while NZ probably made sense to shoot the films, LotR was drawn heavily from Nordic mythology and as a half Scandi myself, a casual walk though some old Swedish forest gives far more of a LotR feel than NZ does, in my opinion. The work of Swedish artist John Bauer on Scandi fairy tales is wonderfully evocative. In some respects Ralph Bakshi's animated version of LotR, while unfinished and flawed, for me does a wonderful job of conveying the fantasy elements of Middle Earth. Anyway I'm going off topic again, sorry!
IIRC Tolkien intended it to be a sort of "(Icelandic?) Epic for England" or something to that effect; so apart from the appropriation element, that for me is one of the major reasons the films got the entire "feel" wrong.
