Three Movies and One Comment to Cover Them

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2007)

I read these books over twenty-five years ago. By the time I saw these movies for the first time, enough time had passed that I had forgotten some of the finer points of the stories. For example, I had forgotten all about the Tom Bombadil episode, and I didn't think anything was missing when they didn't use it in the movie.
When I read the books, I was curious how this would look on a movie screen with live action characters. I was especially curious as to what Gollum would look like. And while I'm on the subject of Gollum, let me put to bed right now the issue on Gollum being a conflicted character. He was not a conflicted character. He was purely evil. He hated Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam because Bilbo took the only thing in the whole world that meant anything to him, and he murdered his own brother to obtain that. The only conflict Gollum had with himself was in deciding when to do away with the hobbits and to confiscate the ring from them. He was smart enough to realize he couldn't strike at them prematurely. That was the only reason he argued with himself and showed any kind of restraint or submission. He would do anything to get his precious back to him.
All of these stories were told very well. In fact, the movies were a lot easier to follow than the books were. The scenery was amazing in these movies. It looked very much like a fairy tale world. My only knock against them is that the battle scenes, when shown from a panoramic view looked too much like a video game with their computer graphics. Otherwise, the best use of computer graphics I've seen so far. And I am not a big fan of computer graphics. Decidedly a magnificent effort to bring these stories to life on the movie screen. I only wish that they would have done THE HOBBIT as a prologue to all this. It would have been great to precede this story with Bilbo's adventures. Otherwise, great. 9 out of 10 (for all of them.)