success!

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2003)

More than 20 years after Ralph Bakshi's pitiful 1978 crossover disaster, here's the unrivaled "Lord Of The Rings"-adaption. Peter Jackson finally made it. One of my all-time favorites. i do prefer sci-fi in general, but this one shifts the boundaries with striking ease.
The reasons why earlier attempts (despite all memorable effort) just had to fail, were Bakshi's enormous budget problems and (most of all) the impossibility to bring certain phantasmagorias to convincing life on screen. Nowadays no really too big thing with vastly improved computer aid.
But the massively enhanced visual impact is not the biggest improvement here, the best thing about LOTR is: this movie works! It's immediately captivating, stunning, pleasant, weird, frantic, funny, sad, freaky, tough, foolish and wise, depicting all the chicken skin plots of Tolkien's literary artwork with humble respect, credibility, style, and industrial strength.
And it has stars: Viggo Mortensen is the only possible Strider, Liv Tyler and Kate Blanchett excel in medieval, exotic weirdness, and Elijah Wood gives one hell of a haunted Frodo. Not to mention the other actors, each one of them performing brilliant and awe-inspiring.
The only pity about it: Gandalf is not played by Donald Sutherland. But you can't have everything, i guess...