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Review:Fellowship of the Ring
Everyone has expectations about this movie. I imagine most of you have read the books. You all have ideas about what a Balrog looks like. What Gandalf is like. And yes, hell, even what the ring should look like. And you simply can't expect a movie to meet everyones ideas... but this thing came just as close as I could have hoped.
In short, there aren't many great movies that come out any more... but this is one of them. Everyone seems nearly perfectly cast. The special effects are nothing short of brilliant. The sets from the Shire on out look so wonderful and believable that you just wanna move in... until the Ring Wraiths show up and make everything all miserable.
Elijah Woods pulls off Frodo quite well. Yeah maybe he fell down one to many times, but the angst is believable. And Gandalf? His desire for the ring is intense and his actions are truly heroic.
I can't imagine a film adaptation of perhaps the best book ever written being done better. The first 45 minutes are a bit slow going, but once the Fellowship starts coming together I just didn't want to blink.
I could find things to nitpick about: some scenes the audio mix wasn't quite right, but that could partially have been the mediocre sound system in the theater: dialog was a bit muffled under the music. Some of the effects were noticably CG, but those were rare. Quite frankly nobody has done CG monsters as convincingly in a film to date. There was a handful of shots that looked faked, and all the rest seemed as perfect as could be.
God damn. The hype is warranted. The wait was worth it. But 12 months for the next one? At least I have my copy of FFX to keep me occupied during maybe 40 hours of the next 8,760 or so I have to wait. But who's counting?
Best book ever written??!?!
Tolkien was a professor of english and was especially interested in old english language. LotR is as much an exercise in language and a forum for Tolkien's own "retro" poetry as an epic novel, but if you haven't ever read a better book, maybe you should put down the O'reilly and take a literature class!
Whoever hasn't heard of the plot by now probably has been living under a rock.
Yup, I would consider living anywhere outside the US living under a rock too, if I where American.
Because I wouldn't even know there WAS anything outside the US! Sjeesj, WHEN are you guys going to learn that everything that's tradition in the US is not always known to people from/in other countries?
I'm from Holland (since not too long live in the US, actually) and had never heard of the book until my (US) wife bought it. I would like to see the movie, and yes, he would have spoiled it.
As I said, I think your memory's fuzzy. But then, I've never been that big a fan of fantasy. But even disregarding that, where was the fun? The whole thing was too dark, too long, and the only interesting things were the audience members who were freezing their collective asses off waiting for the doors to open because they thought dressing up as hobbits and elves would be a good idea. Harumph.
Personally, I'm waiting to see Ali.
Dancin Santa
Think about it. The main characters go
- From one place to another
- Run into all kinds of problems getting there
- Have some sort of battle
Wash, rinse, repeat.I certainly hope that Jackson was intelligent enough to add more of a plot. For instance, why not add in a few love triangles? Or, for that matter, why not get rid of the silly hobbits and focus on the exciting parts -- the wizards and the elves?
Virtually anothing would help the story anyway.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Liv is one hot piece of ass, so you don't have to listen to her voice to enjoy her presence.
Agreed! LOTR is at its worst boring. At its best, it is overwrought. I can think of better Fantasy/SciFi stuff than this (Stephen R. Donaldson comes to mind) and most of that genre is full of bad writers, megalomaniacs and blowhards (Robert Jordan comes to mind). If you want a challenging, multibook read try Mishima's 4-book series that includes Runaway Horses. I know too many geeks I work with who are obsessed with Tolkien, Star Wars, etc., but turn their collective noses up at The Ramayana or the Epic of Gilgamesh. I find the whole geek culture of fantasy very shallow.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Wait a minute;
Are you suggesting that nothing that is good should be mentioned here? It was great. So I suppose that from now on only negative reviews should be posted. Ok, lemme review your post.
U R DUM.
Thank you for your time.
Carpe Deez