Unsubtle

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

Yes this film is visually impressive and quite grand. Some of the acting, especially Ian McKellen's rendering of Gandalf, is very good. I have no argument with the many parts of the original story that had to be compressed or trimmed in order to fit the material from the book into even a three hour movie.
However several fundamental areas of the story were changed in ways that are distracting and even distressing to one who has recently re-read the LOTR books--and that don't contribute to fitting the story in the time available or improve on or clarify it in the least.
For example Gandalf never revealed to Saurman that the Bilbo or Frodo possessed the One Ring. Gandalf was suspicious of Saurman's motives for long before the events of the story. Saurman suspected that Gandalf knew of the Ring and imprisoned him in an attempt to extract information and impede Gandalf's influence on events. Saurman didn't know of the Fellowship, it's mission or it's travels at the time they attempted the mountain pass and failed. It was the pure malice of the mountain that forced them to retreat and enter Moria. A better adaptation would have been to skip the attempt at the mountain pass entirely to save time in the film. Also, Saurman was never in direct league with Sauron, though he was beguiled by Sauron through his use of the Palantir and became the Dark Lord's unwitting agent. The film is overly willing to dispense with these subtleties of plot and dialog so it can make extra room for special effects and action scenes.
The Council of Elrond doesn't bear the even faintest resemblance to Tolkien's narrative, and is terribly muddled. This scene was so completely different and wrong that I won't even attempt a comparison.
The film's treatment of Galadriel's revelation to Frodo of how the One Ring would make her "terrible and worshipful" was unintelligibly overdone and lacked the subtlety of the original exchange--Galadriel was not severely tempted by the One Ring and mainly wanted to convey the danger it presented to her. What happened to Galadriel's revelation to Frodo that she wielded Nenya, one of the Three Rings of the Elves? "I pass the test" was her wistful expression of how she would prefer the fading of her Ring's power and her people over the twisting evil and terrible doom that the One would lay upon them, not that she had somehow overcome an unbearable temptation to take the Ring at the moment of their conversation.
I'm not simply griping out of plot purism. I would have been happier if the story was even more reduced, but managed hang together cleanly, found a manner of expression that conveyed something more akin to the spirit Tolkien's subtle storytelling, and spent more time on developing the characters, particularly the members of the Fellowship.
I have to admit though, I did like the Balrog.