A Masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (8 September 2003)

I wasn't going to review this movie. There are hundreds of reviews on it and I frankly wasn't going to waste my time repeating the same words of praise.
When I first learned that they were doing these movies, I thought, "Great! Another series of movies I'll hate, modeled after a trilogy of books that I love." Stephen King's work, being a prime example. I love the literary works, and the movies all just die on the screen; be it big or little. Then I learned that Peter Jackson was directing it and I was even less eager to see the movies. I never liked the Frighteners and Meet the Feebles?! Wow, did that movie stink UP the place!
And then I discovered they had no plans of making the prequel; "The Hobbit," and that was that. I wasn't going to like the movie, and I refused to be excited about it. Any of it. But then, I was GIVEN tickets as an early Yule present and so I begrudgingly attended its premier here in the Smokies. I was very pleasantly surprised. I ended up seeing this movie twice in the theaters, and have since bought the extended edition gift set of this work.
The opening sequence was so well done, that I couldn't find any reason at all to not accept it. They didn't do "The Hobbit," true enough, but they filled in that time and gave the viewers enough of the beginning that I could thoroughly subscribe to the movie.
Many critics have literally bashed Peter Jackson's omission of one of the characters in Frodo's party, but the character was hardly relevant to the plot, the storyline, or the story itself and was best left out. I didn't even miss old Tom "what'shisname," to tell you the truth.
I do have a problem with Aragorn's character's emotionality in the movie. His character in the book was a seasoned Ranger. His emotional instability; ie: his crying openly scene after scene, is completely out of character. It lends to the storyline with Arwen, and furthers the movie along, true enough, and personally, I didn't mind it. It was just out of character. He's rough, he's tough; a seasoned ranger. He shouldn't have been as emotionally portrayed as Jackson did him, although the reasons are clearly due to time constraints. It would have taken forever to develop Aragorn properly, and they frankly did not have enough time, even with the three-plus hours of screen time.
BUT, Jackson's characters were very well developed, the story was very well told. There was a LOT of dialog, but there was a lot of detail that would've been left out; many, many finer details that never would've been able to be expressed without the richness of dialogue and Jackson and his company saw that, thankfully.
All in all, as a Tolkien fan from WAY back, I feel that Peter Jackson did a marvelous job with this, the opening edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It rates so far above, "The Godfather" trilogy (to which it has been compared), that there IS no comparison.
The acting is exemplary. There is no stiffness, no badly delivered lines, no hesitation in performance. Sean Astin truly and greatly surprised me with his brilliant performance as SamWise. The scenery and cinematography is brilliant. The sets and scenes are so well done, I only spied a single flaw...and I was looking! There was a car in the background of one shot! But the car will be missing from the DVD release, I'm sure.
The wardrobing and costumes were finely hand-made; treated to look worn and imperfect, as they should and the Shire was so well done, I was as delighted as any child on Yule morning. But the thing which captured me the most and held me spellbound was the casting. They put just the right people into just the right roles. I simply loved the characters.. Each and every one of them felt just like the book (except for the deviation I already mentioned about Aragorn's emotional state).
First we had "The Godfather," then we were given the "Star Wars" trilogy and now, we have the Lord of the Rings to love. I look forward with great anticipation to the rest of this series.
Thank you, Peter Jackson, for giving of yourself to this extent. It is above and beyond all for which I could have hoped.
This first installment rates a full 10/10 from...
the Fiend :.