I much prefer the movie approach where The Shire and its inhabitants remain largely oblivious to and untouched by all the evil, death and suffering that has happened. It's almost as if everything happened so a little part of the world could remain innocent like a child.
Well, this was a major theme in the book - how you can never go back to innocence and pretend all the bad stuff didn't happen. But in Hollywood everything is happily-ever-after and we never have to learn from our mistakes.
