A good adaptation of the book

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2001)

For the first time I feel the need to actually bother putting some comments on a message board. As I have been reading the other comments about The Lord of The Rings first film, I have become slightly incredulous about the variety of comments put to this film.
I went into the film, having read the three books making up the LOTR, the Hobbit, and I had started on the Simarillion(though I had to give up as I was about 14 at the time and found it very hard going). I therefore went with many preconceptions about the film, and yet a sense of expectation. I was not overly disappointed. For starters the casting was impeccable. The hobbits were fairly well cast, though I have a few doubts about the development of the characters and Frodo's character seemed to have started the doubts about himself that only appear in the closing chapters of the last book. Gandalf was as he should be, old, grey, withered, but yet able to produce the power that is inherent in him. If you read the books you will find that is how he is supposed to be. A little disappointed with Saruman, not for the way he was portrayed, which was fine, but with the way the storyline had been adapted around him. Aragorn was as he should be, and the development of Arwen's role gave a better view for those who had not read the books about their love affair, if it was not perhaps a little hamfisted in the way it was done. The Council of Elrond, and in fact Elrond himself was perhaps the worst part of the film. This was mainly due to the speed in which it had to be done and the unfortunate quick inclusion of the other characters. Obviously there could not have been, as in the book, the full detailed accounts of each character's story and their reasons for being at the Council, purely due to the time limits. The re-forging of Narstil, again unfortunately skipped, left me wondering how the story was going to evolve. I noticed a few complaints about the fight scenes in some of the comments. Admittedly, for the "Matrix Generation" of slow-stop camera trickery, these would have seemed poor, unrehearsed and confusing. Welcome to the world of melee fighting.
The breaking of the Fellowship, I admit, would have been done better in the way that Tolkien did it, and I thought that would have been easier to do on the screen and more credible. Obviously from the comments about how people were disappointed at the ending, the Tolkien ending would have resulted in yet more complaints about the film.
Finally, to sum up and before I get off my soap-box, a few closing comments. I found the film to be an excellent rendition of a huge and difficult novel to transfer to the big screen. I was a little disappointed by small niggling details, but on the whole cannot wait till next Christmas for the "Two Towers". I do think it is an outstanding film, possibly better than the Star Wars trilogy, but only perhaps because of the technological advances since the Star Wars trilogy came out, and because of the story behind it which is more of an epic than Star Wars. Star Wars was a film pure and simple, LOTR is a film based on a highly successful novel.
However there are some who don't seem to know what they are talking about. It is chapter one in a TRILOGY, not film one in a series of related, yet not directly following on from one other films. You cannot end the story at the end of chapter one as it would not be a novel, rather a collection of short stories.
Finally, and I mean it this time, if you are still having problems with "understanding" the story: Go and Read the book.