: : Not being an expert on the dress, armor or of any time period, I can only comment on my common perceptions. On the one hand the film shouldn't look like Ivanhoe or even Excaliber. The characters wear a hodgepodge of boots, trousers, waistcoats or vests, cloaks, and hats along with the chainmail and perhaps some body armor. The Hobbits especially seem to dress in more "modern" styles, though that may have been a leftover from the Hobbit, not to mention the "clock" on Bilbo's mantle. Certainly we have some anachronisms here. But overall the world of Middle-Earth should have a style and feel of it's own, rather than be reminiscent of either the all too familiar medieval style films we've all seen, or the current Hollywoodish sword and sorcery films, such as Conan. There certainly seems to be no hardships in the life of the Hobbits of the Shire, nor in many of the places to which they travel. Until the desolation of Mordor there aren't many places that indicate the kind of hard life and miserable existance we extend to medieval or pre-medieval peasant life in Europe.

: :::I agree with Goodgulf. The people of Middle-Earth have a lifestyle all their own, and I don't believe that it will be easy to recreate this on screen. I think the problem is that the makers of the films will want to give a feel that the viewers can identify with, and sadly, that will probably mean some time of midievalism. I think that is the major problem, that the makers will 'sell out' to the viewers, doing things that will atract viewers, instead of basing it entirely on the book. I believe that any movie should be made as J.R.R. would have wanted his works to be shown on screen.
: I especislly agree with Goodgulf's mention of the miserable lives that the peoples of the middle ages had to deal with. In many fantasy movies, the people of villages are always watching out for wandering warlords wearing skulls and stuff like that, and I think that a feel of hardship and constant fear in the lives of the peoples of Middle-earth would be disasterous, and would give people a completely wrong impression of how Tolkien intended it to be.

If I may be impolite; it is obvious that none of you know what you are talking about when calling the life of Medieval peasants miserable- you are stuck in the rennaissance ideology perceiving the so-called Middle-Age as a dark cesspit into which humanity sunk after the peak of the Ancient Mediterrenean high cultures. Indeed the life of many a peasant during the early middle age was full of hardship and danger with the constant work and threat of violence from warring tribes turning into nations on the ruins of the Roman empire. However, in Scandinavia, it was also a period of population increase and formong of states. And, the High Middle Age saw a bettering of circumstances everywhere (as much as such can be generalised) in Europe and some scholars claim that the climate has never before or after been more favorable to farming. Populations exploded, leading to new land being tilled and an enormous energy in all levels of society; churches were built, crusades undertaken trade flourished etc. It is true that the conditions of the peasants worsened again in the 14th century, but the Black Death slew so many peasants that they could afterwards and for the rest of the Late Middle Age demand better treatment by their lords. Indeed the period was influenced by the socalled "Late Medieval Agricultural Crisis", probably caused by a small ice age, and by incessant wars, but that gives us no right to call all the Middle Age "Miserable". Even if the amount of labour they had to do in order to survive can exhaust a lazy modern by the mere thought of it.
Mckay: A history of Western Society" gives a sober picture of the history of the western society and is "politically correct" in also treating the conditions and history of the common people, though I believe that they shoot above the mark when they include the too politically correct subjects such as the treatment of blacks in the European Middle Ages, and that much of their delving into the history of women is boring, but that is my opinion.
Neithan