We'll have to wait a whole year?

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

And then another year after that...just to see the conclusion of this tale? I don't know if I'll be interested in seeing the two upcoming movies by then. I saw this movie last night, and going into the theater, I thought this would turn out to be an amazing movie. Unfortunately, it was not. Why didn't I walk out of the theater with a "WOW!" feeling? Perhaps it's because this movie was not all that great...or not as great as I thought it would be...nor as great as the previews, commercials, and marketing hype made it out to be. It reminds me of all the pre-release hype for "The Phantom Menace" 2 years ago. I've never read any of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, nor did I know what this story was going to be about, prior to the hype. Overall, "The Fellowship of the Rings" was good, enjoyable, and fun. More than anything, it was visually beautiful. It was like seeing the artwork in a storybook about the Middle Ages come to life. And the battle scenes were great to watch. Also, Ian McKellen gave a fantastic performance, as the wizard Gandalf. But now that I have seen this movie, I don't think it would've made a difference if I had chosen to wait till it comes out on video. For its running time of three hours, this movie holds up pretty well. I've seen several three-hour long (and longer) movies ("Gone With The Wind", "The Last Emperor", "Doctor Zhivago", "Titanic", etc.), and I have felt bored while watching them because of the length of those movies. That was not the case with "The Fellowship of the Rings". I did not feel bored at any time during the movie, nor did I think that the movie was too "slow". Nonetheless, I'm not sure if I want to go see it again. *** out of ****.