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The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring
(2001)
That BIG creature who guarded the tunnel under the mountain was my favorite creature and my favorite scene too. I almost hated to see him get killed
He reminded me of a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creation. Harryhausen knew how to take his stop-motion creatures and give them a personality of their own...I didn't feel a lot of personality coming from the creatures in this film though.
The movie is made perfect for those who are already familiar with the story. It functions like a beautiful illustration to the Lord of the Rings novel...effectively providing a visual & auditory journey to the beloved story by J. R. R. Tolkien...
...But I've never read Lord of the Rings...and after spending 3 hours with the movie I still didn't feel any magic. I wanted more of the personal tale, more about their hopes & fears...and more character interactions too. The movie functions as an abridged version of the novel where all the scenes are pared down to the briefest moments, it then relies on visuals to do the storytelling. I get that it's necessary for a director to do that when bringing a long and popular novel to the screen. The same thing happened with David Lynch's Dune (1984). To Peter Jackson's credit he was apparently true to LotR novel, where as Lynch altered the Dune novel for film and thus pissed off the fans.
Objectively: The Fellowship of the Rings is near perfect as it delivers what it intended to do and fans of the novel seem to love it.
Subjectively: I was bored with the lack of exposition and felt I never was invested enough to care about what was happening on the screen. It didn't help that I couldn't make out 1/3rd of the dialogue, thanks to the sound mix being extremely heavy on the music score. The endless creepy creatures and sword fighting did little for me either. While I was amazed at the sheer spectacularness of it all, I struggled to have any connection to the actual story.
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The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring
(2001)
Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: J.R.R. Tolkien (novel), Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson (screenplay)
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom
Genre: Fantasy
Writers: J.R.R. Tolkien (novel), Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson (screenplay)
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom
Genre: Fantasy
That BIG creature who guarded the tunnel under the mountain was my favorite creature and my favorite scene too. I almost hated to see him get killed
He reminded me of a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creation. Harryhausen knew how to take his stop-motion creatures and give them a personality of their own...I didn't feel a lot of personality coming from the creatures in this film though. The movie is made perfect for those who are already familiar with the story. It functions like a beautiful illustration to the Lord of the Rings novel...effectively providing a visual & auditory journey to the beloved story by J. R. R. Tolkien...
...But I've never read Lord of the Rings...and after spending 3 hours with the movie I still didn't feel any magic. I wanted more of the personal tale, more about their hopes & fears...and more character interactions too. The movie functions as an abridged version of the novel where all the scenes are pared down to the briefest moments, it then relies on visuals to do the storytelling. I get that it's necessary for a director to do that when bringing a long and popular novel to the screen. The same thing happened with David Lynch's Dune (1984). To Peter Jackson's credit he was apparently true to LotR novel, where as Lynch altered the Dune novel for film and thus pissed off the fans.
Objectively: The Fellowship of the Rings is near perfect as it delivers what it intended to do and fans of the novel seem to love it.
Subjectively: I was bored with the lack of exposition and felt I never was invested enough to care about what was happening on the screen. It didn't help that I couldn't make out 1/3rd of the dialogue, thanks to the sound mix being extremely heavy on the music score. The endless creepy creatures and sword fighting did little for me either. While I was amazed at the sheer spectacularness of it all, I struggled to have any connection to the actual story.
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