Not a classic like EXCALIBUR, but close. II & III should be even better.

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2001)

I am truly upset that I have to wait one entire year for The Two Towers! It's going to be agonizing. Fellowship Of The Ring is a great book, but the least of the trilogy and fraught with pitfalls for film adaptations. The story is comprised of one long journey, with lots of battles, so translating that to film was a daunting task, but Peter Jackson handled it with incredible skill. The opening prologue, while too reliant on CGI (how I miss the days of EL-Cid sized armies), is a real heart stopper and sets you on a path to complete absorbsion into the film. It makes the prologue from The Mummy Returns look like complete crap (which it sort of is). :-)
The 3 hour running time is very nearly needed, with maybe just a few short scenes that could have been trimmed. Thankfully, all of the (what I call) filler in the first third of the book is excised and the story takes off as a result. Characters are built up and made believable and the Fellowship is made up of people you do truly care about. Performances are outstanding all around, with the biggest nod going to the outstanding Christopher Lee, who proves the man is the master ov evil. He IS Saruman!
The last hour of the film is outstanding cinema, with an incredible battle beneath the mines of Moria and then a big showdown/sword battle with the killer Orcs. The performances of both Sean Bean and Viggo Mortenson are particularly strong here.
It looks as though The Lord of the Rings is off to a great start and since the books only IMPROVE, I have no doubt that film adaptations of THE TWO TOWERS and especially RETURN OF THE KING will do the same and join films like EXCALIBUR and BRAVEHEART on the list of all time great epic films. Fellowship is not quite in that league, but it is close and I do believe Peter Jackson has shown sufficient skill and passion to translate parts two and three with the justice they deserve and that can only mean they will be classics for all time (I hope). Those of you who have been craving a true fantasy film, one without the annoying children's cliches (like in Willow) are going to be thrilled.