Transcends the hype

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2001)

There has been talk of a Lord of the Rings movie since the 1960s, but until now there was only Bakshi's rather pathetic effort in 1978. I'm glad to say that the waiting has been worth it. Not that the movie is perfect, but it is better than I dared to hope.
Visually, it is incomparable. It was well worth the price just to see the depictions of Isengard, Mordor, Rivendell and Moria. There were many regrettable omissions and changes to the story, but they can almost all be justified on the basis of length and number of characters. I was only really disappointed that the relationships were so sketchily drawn, particularly the relationship between Legolas and Gimli. The main problem is that the movie is too short. They would have needed 6 films to do justice to the book. Who would have thought Peter Jackson could have produced something this great? Nothing else in his career could even remotely suggest it.