A painful mutilation of the greatest piece of fantasy literature.

Rating: 1/10 (22 May 2003)

I am a big fan of Tolkien's books, but the movie doesn't do justice to them at all and actually is a major annoyance. The scenery and most of the personae are actually depicted very nicely, but as soon as acting and talking starts it becomes plain that the story has been cut, changed, dumbed down, and vulgarized to such a degree that nothing is left of Tolkien's masterpiece and what remains is just an over-length, fantasy film with a thin story and boring characters.
The film has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, its fundamental assumptions seem to be: (1) if a danger is such that the heroes just might escape then it's no real danger and must be enlarged to ridiculous proportions. (2) Comic relief can only be achieved through slapstick of the crudest kind. (3) Battle scenes must last at least as long as it would take a five-year-old to read the corresponding passages backward in Chinese. Moreover, if they could be done without special effects they are bad and must be "enhanced". (4) A traitor must walk around with a sign saying "I am a traitor".
The worst example for this lack of subtlety is that the Ring is handled much too often, too openly, and with too little care. This trivializes the sinister and threatening item and takes away much of the power of the story.
The reckless exaggeration in the "action scenes" is equally awful. Case in point the "Gate of Moria"-scene, when the Watcher gives Frodo a ride in the merry-go-round until everyone had a chance to hack at him; the more restrained story in the book is much more effective IMHO. Similarly mutilated are the scenes: "Crossing of the Brandywine", "Cutting Cushions in Bree", "The Burning of the Riders" at Weathertop, "The Drowning of Sam Gamgee", "Wizards slug it out in Orthanc", and, of course, "They have a Cave Troll", and, really, all of Moria.

The main hero, Frodo, gives the impression of a loser: all the scenes in which (in the book) he shows courage, wisdom, resolve are cut or changed. Worst i find this in the key scenes in the Barrow (cut) and at Weathertop. There is nothing in the film giving any hint why Frodo might be "the best Hobbit in the Shire".
Due to the many cut or twisted scenes, more than half of the characters have little resemblance to the ones in Tolkien's LotR: Frodo is a loser, Merry and Pippin are idiots until they suddenly turn out to be warrior princes, Elrond appears to be permanently pissed off -- as if everything "... stinks!", Strider is just another warrior hero (his being a loremaster, a healer, the "greatest traveller of our time" etc. does not show), Galadriel and Lorien is done so badly that i wish it would have been cut completely ("more fair than thought of mortal men" is a tall order, but Jackson does not even manage "fair"). Only Gandalf, Bilbo, and Saruman are rendered more or less well.
I could go on, nearly every scene has gone wrong. Nothing of the depth of Tolkien's vision, the attention he paid to details (not only visual but to fine-tuning the development of the main characters) or the poetry in his creation is conveyed. What remains of the story is not told in a very coherent or convincing fashion, neither the acting nor the special effects are remarkable.
All in all, a complete and utter failure to turn a great book into a movie.