The "weak link" of the trilogy...

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2019)

I mean, this one had to do the heavy lifting with bloated (needed) exposition, creating the fundations in which the sequels would play around.
The past and origin of the story the trilogy was going to tell, including the races, plus developing our 4 protagonists (Frodo and Sam, Gandalf and Aragorn), show the villains, and leave space for the secondary characters.
This can get tiresome, and for me, it felt boring in the more contemplatives parts, when the elfs where predominant. In a three our epic, having 20+ boring minutes is a flaw, but not a huge deal.
The dialogue and psychology of the characters is simplistic (a bit childish), like the overall story (good vs. evil), but that's a happy trade off for this epic and immersive world building. Both characters and dialogue improve in the sequels.
With so much time filled with exposition and action/adventure or world building, the director abuses a little of a combination of: slow motion, score and voice eco, to make us feel for our characters. It's not a big deal, but it gets repetetive and quite pointless.
The production. Acting. Cinematography. Special effects (for the time). The epic and thrilling adventure. Everything is so perfect that even the people not inclined to like fantasy stories would feel impossible not to finish the story after this one (like myself, when I watched it for the first time). And it only gets better after this one.