Peter Jackson Conjures Up the Most Potent Motion Picture Magic in Years!

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2016)

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a spectacle with the emotional charge of a thunderbolt on a canvas brushed with master strokes. With authority and disarming creative propensity, director Peter Jackson creates mystic illusions borne from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic novel. The result is a marvelous journey, where gentle hobbits, powerful wizards and humans meld with trolls, misshapen orcs, black-cloaked ring-wraiths and Uruk-Hai.
In the first chapter The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the magical land of Middle-earth is the fictional setting, but it's no backdrop; it's a living, breathing universe, in which mild-mannered hobbit Frodo Baggins (a brilliant Elijah Wood) is forced to turn hero when he inherits the ring of absolute power - the one that grants long life, invisibility and carries with it the inevitable seduction of evil. Assisted by powerful wizard Gandalf (a perfectly cast Ian McKellen) and a motley fellowship of warriors, he must journey across Middle Earth to return the talisman to its source. Frodo's entourage includes the brooding but valiant ranger Aragorn (a mesmerizing Viggo Mortensen), the scheming but brave Boromir (Sean Bean) and the dashing elfin archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom). Also along for the adventure are three of Frodo's mischief-making hobbit chums from the Shire. Frodo sets out with this coterie on an epic quest to carry the ring into the core of the vanquished dark lord Sauron's lair, who has been hot on the hunt, to destroy it in the searing fires of Mount Doom.
Their journey is fraught with adventure, as the fellowship does extensive battle with all sorts of rogues along the way. Orchestrating all the evil-doing is the fallen wizard Saruman (a marvelously malevolent Christopher Lee), who has gone over to the dark side and battles wits with the cagey old Gandalf. All along the way, there's plenty of soul-searching as Frodo questions his fate and his comrades must fight off the sinister allure of the magical gold ring. And it's in this aspect that Jackson elevates the film beyond mere adventure escapism. He treats the story's metaphorical properties with due gravity, but without falling into turgid sermonizing. He strikes a nice balance of deeper meaning and sheer entertainment.
Weighty with Middle-earth lore and eye-dazzling vistas of the storybook Shire, the Elvish town of Rivendell and ravaged land of Mordor; alive with the personalities of jaunty hobbits, toiling gnomes, enchanting elves and dashing warriors, the film is a fine wonder of technical achievement and masterly acting in service of a rich, rousing and meaningful story. The computer-generated images transform the New Zealand locations into views that will take your breath away and only someone with a pathological aversion to fantasy could fail to be absorbed and transported by this stunning, sincere and frequently terrifying adaptation. Cinematically inspiring, the costume, production design, prosthetic body parts and make up are extraordinary in their detail, complete in every way.
Peter Jackson does not only attempt the most ambitious film project in modern cinema history, he pulls it off with a breathtaking mixture of nerve and verve, conjuring the most potent major-motion-picture magic in years.