A Lesson to Hollywood that Big Does Not Equals Bad

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

This is my first comment ever for a movie, although i have previously read hundreds of them. I fell like a first time director doing his very first commentary in a DVD, i guess.
First of all i want to say that i loved Lord Of The Rings (LOTR). I've read the book some 12 years now (was it that long ago?). I'm not fanatic about it, but i liked it a lot. And for the general quality standards of fantasy that exists nowdays, it's still towers high and above all. Of course this book is the inspiration for all those tonnes of eroic epic quest-for-the-magical-amulet-or-whatever fantasy crap that is sold today. It ruined fantasy and made it guettizised. But is it truly Tolkien's fault? he just wrote a book that was his message to his children about the world has he saw it, and was writen while WWII was happening. He always denied that WWII had any influence on the book, but who can seriouly believe that? LOTR is a book about how the world is changing. Subtly that mensage come across, and it's a love letter to a time when things were easier and better, a longing for a pastoral past being ruined by modern industrialization. No wonder Mordor and Isengard are descripted as huges fountries. And those images are some of the greatest in the movie. It was the first that truly made me sense of awe that was so absent this year in movies. Truly the first battle in the movie prologue beetween the numanarians and the elves against the Sauron hords are great, but the industrial images made me remind all again what LOTR was about. Of course, the movie is mainly an entertainment feist, and in that it delivers totaly. I was very entertained,and what's better, was not treated as an imbecile for it, unlike Tomb Raider or Pearl Harbour. That movie brough back a true sense of wonder, the joy of discovering minute by minute a new region or aspect of this world, at the same time making me remember that long ago first read and also seeign it for the first time though my eyes. It's like all those images complementary to the text had gained live. The casting is dead right, no actor is miscasted, all are correct and they give greatperformances, never for once playing as if they were just making a kid's movie and nothing is to be taken seriously. Quite the contrary.In true, what's the big difference in doing shakespeare in a stage or acting fantasy in front of a blue screen? For the actor it's the material it matters, and for thise actors it mattered. And we as the public only gained by that. Technically the movie is flautless, all aspects of production are right and proper. The director Peter Jackson is a new big name to watch now.He stopped being the guy that made some cool horror movies and one great teen drama (Heavenly Creatures), but a filmmaker of scope and endless imagination. The greatest contorvesy of LOTR is the adaptation. Some complain that it's not as the book is. I think that complain is out of fundament. Bothbook and movie are different media and one cannot translate completly one for the other. The true question is not if a paraghraph is absent or not, but if the spirit of the novel was transposed in the adaptation. Adn it was. Brillantly! Some things were changes, some characters either lostor changed a bit. Ispecialy congratulate the screenwriters for dumping the Tom Bombadil episode, it just stoped the story and to the narrative it's of no interest. Until now i totaly agree with the filmmakers choices and i think thatLOTR:Fellowship Of The Ring is the best entertaining movie of 2001. I know, with the lame competition that showed up this year it's not saying much, but in general i truly believethat this movie is a great one, and it will be remembered in the future,and it will be the comparison point to all the future fantasy movies. Like the book itself.