good but not great: serious lack of character development

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2001)

(May contain SPOILERS) Frankly, I'm astounded and perplexed that people have been rating this movie so highly. All I can say is that many people posting here must be getting paid by the movie studio to artificially pump up this movie.Also, I have to assume that most of the posters are under the age of 15 and haven't seen Braveheart, Excalibur, Lawrence of Arabia etc. movies which are a cut above LOTR. I saw this movie last night and thought it was quite good-but by no means a classic! Of course, the movie is visually very stunning, however, the biggest complaint I have is there was no effort to develop the characters of Gimli, Legolas etc etc. I really wanted to empathize with the characters like Boromir but frankly I felt no emotion for him whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I REALLY wanted to feel for the characters but it just didn't strike a visceral cord with me in the same manner that movies like Braveheart did, for example.Also, what was the deal with Arwen? I don't mind Mr. Jackson changing things here and there but I really object to her being the one who takes out the Dark Riders with a flood-which actually was done by Gandalf if memory serves. Another complaint I have is that there is no obvious comraderie among the Fellowship. In the books, eg, Gimli and Legolas were always trying to upstage each other by seeing who had killed the most Orcs. I think they should have made a much better effort to develop the characters of all the Fellowship members.I think that John Rhys Davies was wasted in this role, and frankly, probably too old to be playing the part. Also, I don't recall in the books that ORCS were essentially Elves that had been made evil by Saruman (If I'm wrong, someone please tell me the page number and what book, thanks). Finally, I'm somewhat hesitant about critizing this movie too much because after all this is only the first third. But hey, that's my $.02.