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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?
The movie was the first book. The next two movies (due out December 2002 and 2003) cover the rest of the story.
Virg
OK, I loved the movie. Very nice. They cut the right parts and I have no major bitches about the changes... save one:
Was anyone else pissed off when Gandalf was made to look like a bit of a tottering old fool? In general, for the first 20-30 minutes, but specifically hitting his head on the DOOR? I mean JINKIES! He's a bloody WIZARD, one of the most powerful beings in middle earth. I don't recall him hitting his head on a bloody DOOR in the book!
OK, end rant. Good movie. Go see it if you haven't.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
First off, I thought it was really good, and the flaws were minor. That said:
The movie gives away what's going on with Gandalf before Frodo reached Rivendell. Most everyone knows anyway, but I still preferred the effect of the book where they're really hoping Gandalf will show up any minute, and it's a big mystery why this wizard, who's always on time, is late.
Frodo doesn't shout anything at the Nazgul on Weathertop. Having him shout Elbereth and saving himself long enough for Aragorn to get back helped to set up the effect where Frodo sometimes just does the right thing, without knowing that it's right, because he's fated to be doing these things.
The effect of wearing the Ring was a bit over the top. If I were Bilbo and that happened when I put on the Ring, I'd have thrown it away long before finding out that it made you invisible. And I'd have never worn it for as long as Frodo does near the end.
Some of Moria didn't make much sense. They were surrounded by a huge army with range weapons and good vantage points. Then they're saved by the balrog, which scares away the orcish horde. The orcish horde almost certainly could have done them in with a bit of persistence. Then they cross the broken stairs. If they were fleeing the balrog, it must have ended up behind that area when it crumbled. So how did it catch up with them at the Bridge? It can't fly or anything, and it didn't look like there was a way around that chasm. And if the stairs were in that bad shape, they'd probably have broken under Balin's group.
Merry and Pippin didn't intentionally join Sam and Frodo. It saved a bit of time, I guess, but it seemed odd that they'd follow him halfway across the world after running into him randomly in a field.
Things I thought they did particularly well:
Bilbo, when he sees the Ring. I thought for an instant he might actually be able to take it away. Yow. Also Galadriel, when she sees it. I noticed that, despite the transformation, she didn't actually reach towards it, and Frodo didn't draw back.
Aragorn running into Frodo near the end. I was worried that it would be bad, because it wasn't in the book at all, but it worked really well. They really got what Aragorn would have done, had he found Frodo, and having it happen helped demonstrate his character even more.
The Nazgul looked more true to the text than my imagination was. The cloak is a real cloak, the horse is a real horse, and the rest is shadows.
I wished:
They'd had the camera swoop through Middle-Earth from important event to important event. The movie didn't really give the idea of Middle-Earth being a really long walk; one thing I liked about the book was the feeling that there was a really big world that they go through.
Frodo had worn the ring when he was about to try crossing the lake. But that's just because I wanted to see the boat launch itself. Plus he could have just gone by the orcs.
It had been winter outside Lothlorien, for the contrast.
And a couple dozen tiny details they didn't bother with.