Too Much Action, Too Little Character Development (6/10)

Rating: 6/10 (14 January 2002)

(I saw this in the theater, YMMV)
I really wanted to like this movie. I am probably part of the target audience. I remember sitting in the library as a child watching the animated version of the Tolken books. I read them in Middle School and High School. I had The Atlas of Middle Earth. I even tried to read the Simillarion (sp?). Although I have spent more than ten years away from fantasy and living in the real world instead, when I heard this movie was being made, I dug out the paperback boxed set I had as a child and read them again.
The books are magnificent. There is a sense of history, of a struggle between good and evil on a grand scale, and strong, believable characters. I looked forward to seeing this represented on the big screen. How disappointed I was since the movie never lives up to the book and is just pretty bad.
Peter Jackson is just not up to the task of making this movie. Three main failings are that (1) he cannot communicate the passage of time or distance; (2) he falls prey to the current Hollywood fashion of hyper-violence, and (3) he seems more interested in showing off his homeland of New Zealand, than developing characters.
The Fellowship travels many miles over many days. Jackson never effectively communicated this and the effect is that these people walked across a few fields in a day or two to reach their destination. One clue that something was horribly wrong was when Frodo's group of Hobbits was headed to Rivendel. They walk through fields in late summer and seem to make the journey i a day or two at most. When they are attacked before reaching Rivendel, it is still a late summer setting. When Frodo awakes (seemingly the next day) in Rivendel, he is told it is October. What?
Jackson is also particularly bad at arranging the action scenes. Both of the main action scenes, the attack in the Mines of Moria and the orc attack at the river, are laughable. There are dozens, hundreds, thousands of enemies that attack the party. Two guys with swords and an elf with a bow kill them all. It is impossible not to watch without rolling your eyes. During the fights, the editing is jerky and nauseating. Finally, Jackson cannot even communicate the death of one of the party. Boromir (a burly man with a sword) is shot full of dozens of arrows but still fights on. "Just die already," I thought when watching it and any sense of loss was washed away by impossible action and bad use of music. The scene wasn't sad, it was pathetic.
Finally, Jackson used too many helicopter shots of the group walking through the New Zealand countryside, and not enough scenes developing the characters in the movie. The most well-developed character is Bilbo, who is only seen for the first third of the movie and will never bee seen again. There was no time spent on the relationship between the dwarf and the elf. For one second at the Council of Elrond the tension between the races is felt. This is never developed at all. Why not? More time spent on the relationship between the hobbits. Why does Sam feel the need to protect Frodo? Why are Merry and Pippin coming along on this dangerous journey?
I am afraid that the rest will be as bad as the first. I will go see them, but probably once the theaters allow discounted rates.