Comparison with "Harry Potter"

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2002)

Two almost simultaneous and the most expected world releases of the year 2001 were the "Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" and "Harry Potter". One might find that they have a lot in common (made upon a best-sold book, full of fantasy and magic, tell about a fight "good vs. evil"), but yet they are very different. The principal point of difference is the way the authors of the respective books worked on them and what they meant to say. To my mind, Tolkien developed the world of Middle-Earth (including the characters and their psychological profiles) much deeper than Rowling did that with Hogwarts and the characters therein. It also seems to me that writing "Harry Potter" was more about money-making than a good-book-writing. So, it was quite difficult to make a movie better than a book and it remained on the same or even lower level because of closely following the book's plot.
As for "The Lord of The Rings", the book itself was great, which allowed to make the movie the same or almost as brilliant. Sure, the movie had not to follow the book completely (otherwise we could have got something similar to "Harry Potter"), but I have to admit, that because of inevitable omission of certain parts of the book (otherwise the movie would be too long) one gets the impression of seeing the separate but consequent scenes. To tell the truth, I doubt if it's for the better or for the worse, I'd prefer to leave it just as an observation.
In the very end of the movie I was somewhat disappointed by music. The flute melody which started in the final scene reminded too much that of "Titanic" (and it was the scene with the boat!). Howard Shore should have noticed what his melody was like.
In overall, I give it 9 of 10, because if you give all 10, you don't leave any reserve for a bit better movie to see, which might be the case with the parts 2 and 3.