Now that's more like it.

Rating: 10/10 (28 October 2002)

The summary above relates to Lord of the Rings, The (1978) which I detested. Peter Jackson did a superb job bringing Tolkien's Middle-earth to the screen. However, I think it's current high rating is seriously premature. This movie cannot stand on its own. Like the book, it's a single continuous narrative split into three parts for reasons of length. Any ending such as it has will not be seen until Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) arrives in theaters. Right now it's a work-in-progress. Evaluating it should wait until the entire story is finished.
No one who has been a devotee of the book as long as I have can resist comparing the movie against it even though that's not really a valid thing to do across media. So here it goes below. There are POSSIBLE SPOILERS, although they're so highly contextual you probably won't understand them unless you've already seen the movie, so they shouldn't give away much. I don't think I give away any major plot points.
What was done right:

Rivendell was beatuiful. I used to want a castle someday; now I want the "Last Homely House" as Jackson showed it to me.

Bree was very well done. Many probably disagree with me about this, but if there wasn't enough time to develop Butterbur as a character, Bree is best shown as a rough-and-tumble waymeet along a road traveled by a large number of highly questionable characters. This is very much like any place so situated would be.

Hobbiton. Gorgeous.

Casting, for the most part. An exception is noted below. Frodo really should have had brown eyes, but Elijah Wood did a *far* better job than I had anticipated, so it didn't matter.

The Council of Elrond. Impossible to shoot as the book has it, but it provided a stark demonstration of the Ring's true power. A highly skillful adaptation.

The Mirror of Galadriel. Perhaps the sfx were overdone at a crucial moment, but at least the deep moral import of her choice was preserved and that was the important thing. Hollywood usually glosses over moral issues, or at least the kind of moral issues important to someone like Tolkien.

The Balrog. Very frightening and demonic of course, but there's something else. There's a running debate in Tolkien-related newsgroups and BBS as to whether or not it had wings, as Tolkien's own description is very ambiguous. Jackson succeeded in being just as ambiguous visually, thus pleasing (or displeasing) both camps equally. I nearly laughed out loud in the theater when I realized what he'd done.

Having cut out all the other supporting characters to simplify the script, the method of Gandalf's rescue was perfectly in character.

We see a brief shot of Minas Tirith. Beautiful.

And anything else not mentioned below.
What was done wrong:

The time compression at the beginning. Seventeen years were supposed to have passed between the Party and Gandalf's revelation of the true nature of the Ring. Instead it looked like a year or two at most, and this introduces a plothole. Bilbo's sudden aging was attributed to his putting the Ring aside, but why wasn't Gollum, who'd possessed the Ring for centuries, similarly affected?

Arwen's expanded role and Aragorn's mangled motivation. I thought Liv Ullman was just not up to this part. It was expanded at the expense of Aragorn's, Elrond's, and Gandalf's, and she would had to have been extraordinary to satisfy offended book fans. She wasn't. A line was given to Elrond that inexplicably removes a strong motivation for Aragorn to fulfill his heritage, whereas in the book it was a condition that he himself imposed before he would consent to their relationship. Since it would have enhanced both the romance and the adventure, why not leave it as it was?

Moria. The entire complex was supposed to have been a thriving city in the past, so what's with the impossibly steep staircases and the unrailed bridges over yawning abysses? It couldn't possibly have functioned. Even populated by Dwarves they would have lost a dozen or so pedestrians a day, and it dilutes the effect of the *one* unrailed bridge over a yawning abyss (part of Moria's defenses) near the exit.

Gimli. John Rhys-Davies has a wonderfully mobile face and a marvellous voice. Both were buried under so much latex and fake hair as to be useless. The actor was completely wasted here to the detriment of the character.

Blond elves? Who says?

Saruman's expanded role during the mountain crossing. The Fellowship was defeated by a malevolent nature spirit responding to Sauron's growing will, *not* a cranky wizard several hundred miles away acting at that moment for no reason we can perceive.

Mostly, this is just the kind of nitpicky stuff a geek like me would pick up on. If you've never read the book, it won't bother you at all. No one who has not read the book who saw this movie that I asked even noticed, and all enjoyed it immensely. Go see it.