Bored of the Rings, Too! (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD))

Member Name: Crazy-Christian

Product:	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD)
Date:	10/04/02 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fans of the book seem to love it, A big epic movie

Disadvantages: Slow for long spells, Confusing if you haven'r read the book(s)

Okay. Prepare to hate me now. I HATED THIS MOVIE!!!

There, I’ve said it, gotten it off my chest and I feel much better now. I’ll just sit back and wait for the backlash. I tried to like it, I really did. I believed the hype, especially when I saw all the reviews in the press which were all talking of Oscar nods for the film (which subsequently came to pass - although thank goodness it didn't win any of the big ones). I like Peter Jackson as a director. I like big epic fantastic movies. So what went wrong?

Well, what I suspect, is that it’s because I have never read the books. I deliberately haven’t read them for the past couple of years since this movie started being filmed. I wanted to go into the cinema with an open mind and no preconceptions. I thought this would be a strength as the film had the onerous task of living up to the imaginations of thousands (possibly millions, I don’t know) and thousands of readers, with their own expectations and visualisations. But I can’t help feeling that this film has been so well received because people refuse to be disappointed by it. They were determined to like it, no matter what.

When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out a couple of years ago, many people were disappointed by it. I loved it! I ignored the hype, sat myself down in my seat, regressed to a twelve-year-old, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie that that nice Mr. Lucas had presented for me. I went and saw it FOUR times, which is unheard of for me! Now, I think, I know how those fans felt. Betrayed, let down, lied to. I don’t think they could have put up with that disappointment again. And so the myth of The Lord of the Rings begins anew...

As most of you know, New Zealander, Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, The Frighteners, Heavenly Creatures) has spent about the last five years getting this trilogy made. It is based on the three (or six depending on how obsessive a f
an you are - sorry!) volumes written by J.R.R. Tolkien and the plan is to release one film each Christmas for the next three years. The whole nine-hour-or-so epic was shot at once over a staggering eighteen-month period. The gaps in between will give the crew time to work on the special effects for the subsequent films.

The first problem, is the huge info-dump that sets up the story of the ring, and all this background information is given at the beginning of the movie in the form of a clumsy voice-over. Surely there was a better, more visual way of presenting this information gradually throughout the movie? I don’t know if the book does it this way but it stinks.

Then we are introduced to hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) and the powerful wizard, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) as well as Bilbo’s nephew, Frodo (Elijah Wood), the young hero of the piece. The latter is entrusted with a ring forged by the dark lord Sauron, that is capable of giving its wearer complete control over Middle Earth (where the story is set). Or something. Sauron survives in the form of a blazing eye and still has some sort of control over the ring, which will always try to be found. The power of the ring corrupts the one who wears it. Couldn’t Bilbo just have given Frodo some nice socks?

Some baddies, black hooded not-quite-men on black horses, very reminiscent of the Hooded Horseman in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, chase after the ring and Frodo goes on the run with fellow hobbits, Samwise (Sean Astin), and Pippin and Merry. They run away, get chased by some monsters, meet some elves and dwarves, get chased by orcs and trolls as they desperately try to reach the land of Mordor so they can destroy the ring, in the very volcano where it was forged. (I have to admit that if I was Sauron, I would just have hid all my forces there, waited for Frodo, and then overwhelmed them all. But then I’m quite a practical chap, which is why I’m a Civil
Servant and not a Dark Lord or anything exciting like that!)

And that’s it: honestly. There’s no more to it than that. And you don’t even get to see any type of conclusion to this opening chapter. It just ends. Even the rest of the audience, including my wife, who all loved it, were still taken aback by the suddenness of its ending. There is no sense of climax, the film being too cyclical and repetitive: run, avoid monster, have a rest, run, avoid monster ... you get the idea. So, when the film ends with a rest you just assume there’s some more running about to come up. But nope. You could almost hear the entire audience as one, breathe "Is that it?" at the end.

Now, I have to be fair and say that everyone else seemed to enjoy it. So, it could just be me. But I don’t think so. My theory is that you’ve all been corrupted by the power of the ring and are under the influence of Sauron, forcing you to enjoy this movie when you should really know better!

The effects are good. Not brilliant, merely good. The CGI is VERY obvious and cartoony, just as it was in Phantom Menace, especially in the battle scenes. Some of the creatures are very well designed and realised, especially the particularly nasty troll, which far surpasses the one in Harry Potter. (In every other respect, however, Potter wins hands down.) The locations were a bit of a letdown as well. New Zealand has always struck me as a very exotic location but much of this looks like it was shot in a field in Somerset. (I don't know why I picked Somerset, I've never been there!)

The look of the film is very mooted also. It seems to be shot in blacks, greys, whites and silvers and looks a lot like Jackson’s previous film, The Frighteners. There’s not a lot of colour in it and I couldn’t help feeling how spectacular it would have all looked if directed by a visionary such as Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam. I th
ink Jackson, a competent director, was out of his depth. He’s done a reasonable job with the ability he has but it could have been so much more. It lacks pace and tension and is boring for long spells.

The acting is also quite ordinary. I thought all the hobbits were bland but some of the additional characters were quite good. Strider (Viggo Mortensen) was excellent and enigmatic and McKellen made a good shout of Gandalf. The ladies were criminally underused which is a shame as Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett were both excellent. Orlando Bloom as Legolas is also quietly effective. I expected more from Christopher Lee as Saruman but he’s a little disappointing. I spent more time in awe at the size of his conk than cowering in fear, I’m afraid. (I DO hate to be so personal in reviews but really, look at the size of it. Perhaps the camera trickery that made the hobbits look smaller was reversed by mistake?)

Let’s see, what else? The score, by the usually brilliant Howard Shore, is poor, the dialogue unmemorable, the humour childish (which doesn’t suit the tone of the film, which is quite frightening - I wouldn’t let any child under ten see it) and the set pieces mundane. The three hours dragged by for me.

Oh, what’s the point. Nobody will believe me, anyway. You all want to see it and you all want to be entertained while you munch your popcorn or your girlfriend’s ear. And if you want to see it, you HAVE to see it on the big screen. It will lose any ability it has to create awe in the viewer when seen on a TV screen.

Tell you what. Just ignore everything I’ve just said. Go and see it, enjoy it and tell everyone else how wonderful it was. You can tell them about this madman on Dooyoo who’s one dwarf short of a Fellowship, and you can all shake your heads and take pity on me.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you...

(Apologies for kind of using an exi
sting title but it so much better fits mine!)

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