Worst movie since THE PHANTOM MENACE

Rating: 1/10 (3 January 2002)

I have never seen so much fanatacism by fans over a movie that was so boring! The people who are reviewing this movie are talking as if they have had a religeous experience. Visually, the movie is well done, which is to be expected considering it was directed by Peter Jackson, who is a genius. The movie is acted well, the sets are good, the costumes are good, all the elements essential for a good movie are there, except one...a decent story line! The story line for this movie reads as follows: "Let's get the ring from point A to point B." THE END! And it didn't even accomplish THAT! At the end of the movie, the entire theatre full of people around me were saying out loud, "What the hell was that? That's it? What a rip off!" Here is a note to the studio execs who pushed this project through: if you are going to have an audience sit through three hours of dribble, there better be some kind of pay off at the end! The biggest problem with this film is that it does not follow the standard structure for a good movie, which is First Act: Set up, Second Act: the main characters are in peril and all might be lost, Third Act: Resolution. This movie had none of that, it was all pretty much First Act. And I understand all these die hard fans keep saying, "But that is how the first book went." Well, TOO BAD! This is not a BOOK! And I know this is a trilogy and the first movie is the first act, but EACH movie should be able to stand on its own. Just like the original Star Wars trilogy did. Each movie was a complete film and stood on its own, each with its own first, second, and third act.

Another problem with LOTR, the action was very boring. The action was boring because there was no set up. It was simply a group of UNDEVELOPED characters walking around and encountering obstacles, passing over the obstacles, and moving on...THE END! A perfect example is when they encounter that giant octopus thing. That came out of nowhere. We, the audience, did not know that an octopus was lurking around. Just suddenly out of nowhere, it attacks them, and easily enough, Strider runs over and hacks it away and all is better. Now, on to the next obstacle. Oh, an entire army of Orcs? No problem, Strider hacks them away. On to the next obstacle. Another giant army of swarming bad guys? No problem, Strider...go get 'em. BORING! BORING! BORING! Who the hell is Strider, anyway? The geeks would probably say, "Oh, you have to read the book." No, I do not. I SAW the movie! If his character was not developed in the movie, then that is a short coming of the MOVIE! This was a big problem with LOTR, no character development.
I think overall Peter Jackson was trying to do the best he could with a script adapted from an overlong fantasy book written in the 30's. I think the movie could have been a lot shorter and a lot more straight forward. A big problem with the film was that the ring never changed hands. Of course, this goes back to the lack of a second act. If there had been a second act at all, the ring would have ended up in the hands of the bad guys, and all doom would be about to take over, and then just in a nick of time, out of courage and cleverness, our little hero Frodo somehow saves the day with an act of self sacrifice, and hurls the ring in to the cracks of doom or whatever. This would have been much more interesting, much more exciting, and a lot less time consuming.
Another thing: the Hobits were SO ANNOYING! They were nothing but wimps! And the "hero," Frodo, had no heroic qualities at all and didn't even seem to be attached to the mission. Everybody he encountered, he tried to give the ring up to them. The elf queen, Gandalf, just whoever wanted it he quickly offered it to them. And he was of very little use in the movie, he was always running and hiding. This film failed to make me care about any of the characters. And what about when that human (006 from Golden Eye) dies at the end? Has there ever been a longer on screen death? I was in my seat going, "Come on already! DIE! GET IT OVER WITH! OK, you're dead! LET'S GO!" He was dribbling on and on and dying on screen for like 15 minutes! And that bad guy that killed him, the really big, ugly Orc, the audience was supposed to hate him. But we didn't have enough time to hate him! The character was introduced and then quickly dispatched....BY STRIDER! Wow, don't mess with Strider, he will kill anybody. I guess he is invincible like SUPERMAN! Again, BORING! If they wanted us to hate and or fear that big ugly Orc, they should have introduced him early on, and had him kill somebody close to Strider, and then have him pursuing our heros through the film, and at the end of the film, he and Strider fight again, this time to settle the score. Now that would have been exciting. That would have given some structure to the movie and given the audience something to anticipate towards the end.
The basic rules of movie making were thrown out the window by this film, and that is why it suffers. I will not go see the next two installments. So at least I learned my lesson, even though it cost me three very painful hours of my life.
If you are looking for something boring that doesn't challenge you at all, then this film is for you. If you like good movies that are exciting, AVOID THIS FILM AT ALL COSTS! This movie DOES NOT belong in the IMDB Top 250 list, and it is an INSULT to movie fans around the world to have this film listed as NUMBER 1. It doesn't rank as number 1, it has way too many problems to even be on the list, and I hope more sensible people will rate this film and knock it down to where it belongs. I rate this film a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.