Good beginning to a memorable trilogy

Rating: 6/10 (1 December 2014)

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is the first of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings"-trilogy and possibly my favorite from the three movies. After a sole writing nomination for one of his earlier works, Jackson started his big run with the Academy Awards here back in 2002. The first hour was pretty great here. I thought the female narrator was a good introduction to the films and I also really enjoyed looking at all the juicy green from the Shire. And we should be glad the headless horseman did not manage to get little Frodo after 60 minutes as then the whole tale would have been over already. That Frodo seemed quite a survivalist anyway looking at the quantity of situations where he came out alive, almost like the Chosen One from "The Matrix". However, the actor who plays Agent Smith is one of the good ones here. They all seem to have a talent to stay away from death, even if they are getting in the most dangerous situations, like Gandalf falling deep down and becoming the White Gandalf. This applies also to many other characters who keep getting missed by Orc arrows by centimeters. Lucky bunch.
Anyway, back to the story. This is obviously a fantasy drama, but it has its fair share of comedic moments as well. Most of these involve the two other Hobbits or pretty much every scene with Gimli the Dwarf, for example when he asks to not be pulled on his beard. While we're at it, that nasty creature down there in the dwarfs' graveyard is truly disgusting. Most of the film is about the journey though, the whole adventure when the group is still together. At the end, they split up. Frodo and Sam keep going to destroy the ring. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli try to free the other two hobbits. I can't say the film did not drag a single second during its 3.5 hours runtime (for me it mostly did during the fight sequences), but at least we get to watch beautiful landscapes and cinematography from start to finish. Also all the creatures included here are fairly special and memorable.
One of my favorite scenes is when we see Frodo's grief and regret when Gandalf allegedly dies as Frodo was the one who wanted to take the Moria route and Gandalf did not. Another one I liked was the Elf marching scene early on when Sam says it makes him sad for some reason. It's almost like a special march of animals (penguins for example, or birds flying south). Two scenes I did not like that much were when we saw what the ring does to people. Bilbo and Galadriel look almost like horror movie creatures during their respective scenes and that is not a course the film takes at any other point. This film is all about Sauron's invisible danger and these two transformation scenes did not work in its favor. Nonetheless, Saruman felt more like the main antagonist in this film here, first of all of course because of his fight against Gandalf and then also because he pretty much commands the Orc army. During one scene he gives the order to kill all those who accompany the Hobbits. Then there is the usual components to this kind of movies, such as the enemy within the group, who (luckily to Frodo?) gets killed by the Orc army.
Elijah Wood was one of the most promising young actors back then, so it was no surprise he got cast. The bigger surprise is possibly Sean Astin, who was not that well-known, but worked wonders during the whole trilogy and is possibly my favorite actor from the whole cast taking all three films together. Today he is possibly the epitome of the loyal friend in movie history. The movie ends with an Enya song (also Academy Award nominated). She did the super successful song connected with the 9/11-tragedy some months earlier and her song here works very well too. Taking all components together, this is a pretty good movie and a must-see for everybody with an interest in the fantasy genre.