Jackson's "Fellowship" Seems Fairer, Feels Fouler

Rating: Null/10 (21 December 2001)

Do you like medieval fantasy, but hate to read? Do you find character development and exposition are annoyances you are forced to tolerate between action scenes? Then this may be the film for you. Peter Jackson's `The Fellowship of the Ring' rips out all the subtlety from the novel that gave birth to the fantasy genre and leaves you with a pumped-up, over-simplified caricature of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece.
Okay, I admit it. The scenery is breathtaking. The costumes and make-up are inspired. The casting (with a few exceptions) is divine. But just like a teen pop-star, underneath the eye-candy, there's no there there. Yes, there are some excellent performances, and a handful of characters and scenes are right on target. But that just makes the plot skimming, gross character distortions, and over-indulgent action scenes stand out all the more.
Ralph Bakshi's `Lord of the Rings' film from the late 70's, as ugly and inaccuracy-laden as it was, at least understood most of its characters and made an effort to stay true to the text. Jackson, on the other hand, seems to delight in taking credit for triumphs great or small from one character and bestowing them on another, for no apparent reason. He also either skipped or botched almost every pivotal or memorable line of dialogue. The impact of Frodo's heroic and poignant, `I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way,' is lost when Jackson turns the Council of Elrond into a shouting match--the first half of the line being drowned out, and the second coming after so long a pause that audiences actually laugh at it.
If you read `The Lord of the Rings', you will recall how Tolkien drew you into his world rich in cultures, language, and history with a subtle thread woven through your imagination. Jackson apparently decided this task would be better accomplished with a sledgehammer. In an effort to get to the next hyped-up, over-the-top fight scene, Jackson seems to have decided that every nuance of the book should be painted in bright primary colors with a flashing neon arrow pointing to it. Where Tolkien gave us evidence of a wary mistrust between dwarves and elves, Jackson gives us a Gimli who shouts, `No elf will lay his hands on this ring!' When Galadriel probes Boromir's thoughts, Tolkien tells us only that Boromir would not speak of the experience. In film, this could be shown in elegant simplicity by having Boromir look quickly away when under scrutiny. But in Jackson's version, we instead are subjected to a long shot where he sweats profusely and his breath echoes in our ears. UmPeter, we got the point. We are capable of thinking for ourselves, you know. And as if that weren't enough, in a subsequent scene Galadriel herself proceeds to bluntly spell out Boromir's thoughts for Frodo and the audience, leaving little suspense to his pivotal scene near the end of the film.
Even the action scenes are overdone. Where Tolkien (and even Bakshi) gave us terse, tense combat, Jackson pulls out all the stops in every fight, and seems to have set himself the goal of trying to outdo every Jerry Bruckheimer film ever made. I kept waiting for him to work in a car chase somewhere. The `Crouching Hobbit, Hidden Wizard' battle in Orthanc was painful in ways I can't even describe. Having seen and enjoyed Jackson's horror/comedy classic `Brain Dead', I knew he had a penchant for going way over the top, but I foolishly assumed that he would realize that what is appropriate for the horror genre really has no place in high fantasy. And the ironic part is that, instead of making them more intense, Jackson succeeds only in causing the action scenes to be the slowest, most dragged-out parts of the film.
You may think I'm being too harsh. I admit I'm a purist when it comes to this story, but I'm no fanatic. If these sacrifices had been made simply due to the fact that the source material is so rich that there was no time to spend on every nuance, they would be a little more palatable. I understand that, even with three 3-hour movies, there is no way to deal with everything in the books. Traditional omissions like Tom Bombadil's chapters are concessions we have to make to the exigencies of filmmaking. But when you bite your tongue at the fact that the entire journey from the Shire to Rivendell is presented in almost summary form, and then have to sit through a 15-minute rancor-oops, I mean cave troll-battle in Moria, or shake your head at the complete omission of the wonderful blindfold scene in Lórien only to be subjected to an all-out melee by the Falls of Rauros involving the entire Fellowship, you find your patience begins to wear awfully thin. Hey, Peter, uminteresting new scenes, but don't you think the time could have been better spent showing things that ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE BOOKS?
If you have never read LotR and you like fantasy movies with lots of action, you may enjoy this film. If LotR to you is `that book about the elves and stuff' that you read when you were younger, you may like this movie as well. But if you truly loved LotR for all the richness and subtlety with which Tolkien infused his saga, you should be gravely disappointed if not incensed by this all-too-Hollywood caricature of a classic novel.
About 2 hours and 45 minutes into the film, Frodo whines, `I wish none of this had ever happened.' So do I, Ringbearer. So do I.