From the perspective of one who never read the books

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

*might contain spoilers*
Before this afternoon, all I knew about "The Lord of the Rings" was that my brother had read the books in junior high and was always trying to convince me to read them. That's right, I never read them and before I comment on the movie I must state that the one thing I got out of it is that they were probably really excellent books to read....But NOT to sit in a movie theater for 3 hours and attempt to watch when you have no idea what's going on! Why didn't I like it? For one thing, I'd have to say the screenwriter depended a bit too much on the supposition that all of the viewers would have read the books before seeing the movie. Several characters were not fleshed out at all, to the point that I had no idea even of what their names were, refering to them only as "that elf guy" and "that dwarf guy" and "the other guy", etc. Several threads were left hanging, not in a "...to be continued" way, but in a "wait a minute, what the heck just happened??" way. For example, for the first hour or so of the film, nine eerie undead black riders hunt Frodo. The good guys repeatedly fight them off, cutting their heads off with swords and throwing torches at them, etc., etc., but they always manage to come back... until they suddenly disappear from the film! Why? Oh, that last time they killed them it was successful? Or they can't get Frodo in whereever it is that he is now? Or what? I had totally no clue. My second major problem with it is that I spent half of the movie with my eyes closed -- not because it was scary, mind you, but because the bizarre cinematography made me want to vomit. All of the swooping and spinning and shaking of the camera was I guess supposed to be innovative and exciting, but it only succeeded in giving me motion sickness. Furthermore, in one seemingly critical battle scene, the camera shook so vigorously that I literally could not bring the screen into focus! Help! In spite of the nausea, I really did enjoy this film for about the first hour or so, until too many characters and plotlines were thrown in with too little backstory. I can understand that this is an epic novel and it's difficult to fit the whole thing in 3 hours in a way that's understandable to those of us who know nothing about Middle Earth, but it seemed to me that an awful lot of it was just spent watching them walk around sans any action when that time could have been better spent introducing the various characters to the viewers and explaining what in the heck was going on!! In summary, to those of you like me who know nothing about "The Lord of the Rings", read the book before you see the movie!!!