What's the 6 and/or 9 year old rating? How tense are the scary bits?

I'd say fine for a 9 year-old but probably too intense for 6. (There's nothing in here to match the emotional intensity of RotK, but the orcs and goblins are legitimately scary.)

The movie does cut down significantly on the number of dead ponies as compared to the book, so that's something.

I think a 6 year-old could probably handle this fine on DVD (if they're used to "grown-up" movies in general) but not in theaters.

Oh, and wargs. Any kids who are even a little bit afraid of dogs should not see this movie.

Thanks. Looking I see it is PG-13, and at 3 hours, I am tending to no for both of them. Casper is more sensitive to scary stuff than Dillo, and the only non-kids movies they've seen (all on DVD) are Galaxy Quest, the original Star Wars Trilogy, The Three Musketeers (with Gene Kelly!), and Ghostbusters.

The hard part will be dealing with the Tantrums of Disappointment.

Aaand Dillo is afraid of dogs.

Yeah, I'd wait for DVD - if nothing else, it is REALLY long and on DVD you can pause for bathroom breaks.

I'm sort of annoyed that Jackson has taken a children's book - Dillo happily listened to The Hobbit read aloud at age 4 - and turned it into movies that are not appropriate for children.

(Not nearly as annoyed as at the excuse for a human being who took the lovely book Mr. Popper's Penguins and turned it into a movie starring Jim Carrey that had no resemblance to the book except that there was a character named Mr. Popper and some penguins, though.)

Are you annoyed by the length or the scariness of the monsters?

Both, since both contribute to the film's inappropriateness for children. Why do you ask?

I'm wondering what are practical solutions. It's pretty clear PJ is endemically unable to not put all the Tolkien in, so it would take more movies to accomplish the same OCD nerdery with shorter run times, and people are already pissed enough.

It would seem possible to be less scary more easily than shorter, but the risk of not having a visceral effect on the adults is probably not going to be broached. I don't have any young associations with the book, so I'm surprised when I hear four year old fans of it--I read it at age 11 or so, so the movie would probably be perfectly designed to freaky my shit in a way I enjoy.

It's impossible for me to put aside childless bias, but I think PG-13 is more appropriate for the world and threats I remember than PG, especially with him returning to a universe that had been constructed for an adult movie in the first place.

I can't really see him doing much other than PG-13, basically. I don't know enough about movie demographics to say if charged up adults represent a bigger potential pot than going PG and lightening the scare factor.