Believe the Hype (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD))

Member Name: oldreekie

Product:	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD)
Date:	19/12/01 (285 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: My God, it's fantastic, You have to see it

Disadvantages: the cave troll

Damn, is this a fantastic movie or what?

We daren’t have hoped that the director Peter Jackson could deliver on the first part of his epic $300m cinematic vision of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. So many times we have believed and hoped before only to have our dreams crushed into the dirt of banal mediocrity (Lucas, are you listening?).

But this afternoon in the UGC cinema, Edinburgh, my expectations were met, and then some. With my jaw on the floor, my head spinning somewhere up in the rafters and my heart pounding, I witnessed, in an almost dream-like state, the most intense, exciting, thrilling and yet touching movie I have seen in a very long time. Jackson has succeeded in realising what many thought an unfilmable story, not just adequately, not just satisfactorily but, I’d say, damn near perfectly.

Not only does he succeed in visualising the epic sweep of the battle between Good and Evil for the soul of Middle Earth, he also reminds that each epic battle is the story of many individual instances of heroism, he makes us care about the characters so that when they suffer so do we. This is Epic with heart.

Just over half way through the movie something magical happens. You are watching a fairly fantastic movie but it’s about goblins, elves, wizards, dwarves, it’s about magic and sorcery, it isn’t real but then suddenly something happens ( I won’t say what), and those people, those hobbits and elves and dwarves and exiled kings are hurting, they are grieving and my god, are you grieving with them. Forget the Orc armies swarming over Middle Earth like an army of malignant ants, forget the wonderfully realised locations and the breath-taking scenery. You see Peter Jackson has taken the fantasy genre, up until now dominated by cardboard cut-out campy romps full of women with large breasts in skimpy skirts and men with even larger breasts and shorter skirts, and he has done something
which I don’t think has been done in this genre before; he makes you feel for these characters, he engages your sympathy. This is his greatest triumph and this, along with the all the other wondrous scenes he imagines, is what makes this a great great movie.

Ok, time to take a breath, here’s a bit of plot.

The movie begins with a fantastic prolonged prologue telling us how many millennia ago the One Ring, the Ring of Power forged by the evil lord Sauron to enslave the peoples of Middle Earth was lost, only to turn up in the possession of a Hobbit called Bilbo Baggins many years later.

Bilbo, now a very old hobbit of 111, is tiring of his life in The Shire, the area of Middle Earth where hobbits live, and so sets of on one final journey, leaving all his possessions, including the ring, to his nephew, Frodo. Unfortunately for Frodo the discovery of the ring has not gone unnoticed by it’s creator, Sauron, who has lain dormant, awaiting the time when he is reunited with the ring and he can complete his evil work. Luckily tho, Gandalf the wizard (Sir Ian McKellen) recognises the ring as being the Ring of Power and urges Frodo to flee with the ring, pursued by Ring Wraths, servants of Sauron.

After a couple of scrapes our unlikely hero, along with his three Hobbit travelling companions, Sam, Merry and Pippin arrive at the home of Elrond (Hugo Weaving) in Rivendale, where it is decided by a committee of the remaining races opposed to Sauron that the One Ring must be destroyed and the only place that can be done is in Mordor, the very home of Sauron. And so the Fellowship of the Ring, 4 Hobbits, 2 Humans, a Wizrad, an Elf and a Dwarf, is formed to take the Ring to Mordor and destroy it.

And that covers about 15 minutes of plotting in this near 3 hour movie.

Of course the plot is going to be the most controversial part of this movie. The books have quite a fanatical following and so any deviation from
them could cause a bit of a stink. Well I’m no expert, I have read the books, but that was over 15 years ago. Certain scenes and characters were familiar others less so. However, oh might not be popular, does it matter when a movie is this good, if it slavishly follows the book? I think not and as there is not even the slightest whiff of Jackson attempting a Jar-Jar, I’m sure only the most ardent fan would disagree.

The CGI and make-up effects are top notch. Rubbing Lucas’s nose in it, as he felt only ILM could handle the extensive use of CGI, Jackson used a New Zealand effects company, Weta, and what a great job they do. Apart from creating the realms and myriad bizarre creatures of Middle Earth, they created the swarming armies of Orcs and very impressively used digital scaling techniques to shrink the actors playing the more diminutive roles, such as Hobbits or Dwarves. The only bum note amongst the CGI is a rather naff Cave Troll, a little false looking and badly conceived. However this slight hiccup is soon forgiven when he see The Balrog, an ancient demon, which has to be one of the scariest monsters, and most impressive use of CGI, ever seen in a movie.

I rarely feel the need to comment on a movies sound, but you have to see this in a cinema that has Dolby Digital Surround or whatever it’s called. It’s not just the effect of the sound swirling around the auditorium but the big bass sound hits you square in the chest during the battle scenes, very effective.

Performance wise, well it’s an effects movie isn’t it, it’s a multi-million dollar blockbuster, the actors are just there to fill in the bits of the screen that don’t have digital effects aren’t they?. Wrong again Mr Lucas!. The performances, perhaps not Oscar worthy, are none the less mostly excellent. Altho Elijah Wood has top billing as Frodo Baggins, I found his wide-eyed wonder act as bit much after awhile, mumR
17;s will love him tho. The top three performances, in my book anyway, were from the big people. Sir Ian makes an excellent Gandalf (a role widely tipped to go to Sir Sean Connery), Viggo Mortensen as Strider/Aragorn and, surprisingly enough, top honours to our own Sean Bean as the weak but ultimately redeemed Boromir.

This is not a movie to read about, you have to experience it for yourself. I urge you to go see the movie of the year.

Movie has a “PG” certificate with a specific warning that it may be unsuitable for under 8’s. No sex, no bad language what so ever, not even a damn. A bit of violence but it is cut together so fast that for the most part it is difficult to see what is going on, altho there are a couple of graphic decapitations, kids just love that sort of thing don’t they. On the subject of kids, this isn’t a movie for them in the same way that “Harry Potter” is. There were several kids in the audience who were very fidgety and distracted during the more wordy sections altho they loved the fighting and the monsters.

And in case you still haven’t got it, it is an absolutely fantastic film, you must see it at least once.


20/12/01 - I went to see it again yesterday, slight re-write as a result to reflect some of my thoughts about the movie which were lost in the emotion of the first op!

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