Dr. DVD

I had to explain things to my parents for both the Lord of the Rings movies and the most recent Harry Potter films. Mostly because they haven't read the books. I have to be honest, given the amount of time between the movies themselves and from when I read the books of HP, I myself had some trouble following the action of Deathly Hallows. It has been close to a year since they saw Half-Blood Prince and I didn't encourage them to see Hallows because they most likely wouldn't remember the last movie, much less stuff from three or four movies ago.
They were able to follow the first LOTR movie fine, but the absence of a recap of the first film left them lost in Two Towers. They also found Gollum annoying, which I could totally understand if you were unfamiliar with the source material. They liked ROTK , but only after I did close to an hour's worth of clips from the first two movies the night before we saw it.

Ash Ketchum

Whenever we'd be sitting around the TV watching a movie in the old days, my father had the habit of walking in fairly well into the movie, sometimes when it was even near the end, and asking, "What happened so far?"

Travis McClain

I reject that as a defense, and I'll tell you why. A decent adaptation--even one that deviates from the source material--should still have proper structure, coherent plot, etc. and not require the viewer to have seen or read a single piece of outside material. Sometimes this leads to extraneous exposition, but I'd much rather that, than have a group of fanboys standing in the parking lot later saying things like, "You need to read the book, 'cause it's explained there that..." I view this as a variation on the rule "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage."

Yes, it's interesting and sometimes fun to contrast the two versions; what worked in print vs. what was invented for the screen, etc. But to give a movie a pass for failing to tell a clear story because it is assumed that the audience has read the source material is flat-out wrong and defending it condones the dearth of lazy cinematic storytelling.

Draven

I'll be honest. I read the LOTR books right before I saw the first movie, and I think I was more confused. I would have been better off just seeing the movies. To me, they were a better and less boring "version" of that story.

Blasphemous, I know, but that's just me.

story

This.

Fist of Doom

My Dad was the same way - used to drive my Mom crazy. And he always walked in during a car chase or some crucial dramatic scene. Thing is, after we explained everything, he would usually only watch for a couple of minutes before he lost interest.