Imagine the Mummy with delusions of Grandeur.(spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (27 December 2001)

Ok, I admit, I liked The Mummy movies. They are fun, totally unpretentious, have good CGI..are a good way to eat some popcorn...yet not what I call 'high cinema' by any means..but then again, it doesnt set out to be, so I enjoy it for what it is. Sigh...maybe Jackson really meant to make a Mummy movie. If thats true, then its a shame considering the source material he had to work with.
Don't get me wrong..the movie was good, worth seeing, very entertaining, and surely better than Phantom Menace- but only just so. While Phantom Menace only had Lucas' feeble literary talents to rely on, FOTR had (supposedly) THE greatest fantasy novel of all time, the template by which other series are based, the creator of 'fantasy' as we know(and love) it today. So why was the film so paltry? The reason is that Jackson like Lucas fell victim to the same faux pas...
Faux Pas #1-Assumption of prior familiarity: Lucas relied on the audience's past knowledge(and love) of the SW world to 'carry them' thru the film and supply all the emotion(not good). Similarly, Jackson's movie did the same. I was introduced into alot of characters in this movie and b/c of the frenetic pacing and abysmal screenplay, I only definitively knew the names of say 5 characters-maybe. I had no insight into who they were, what drove them, what their relationships to others were..nothing. Most of the characters, save maybe Gandalph and Frodo were limited to 2D, at best, rendering them mere props and not the grand characters I imagine they are in Tolkein's novels. Thus I had the feeling that had I read the book, alot of what happened would have made more sense and I would have cared what happened to the characters.I would have been involved and 'pulled' into the film. As it was..I was interested in what happened...but not horribly affected either way by what did happen, a few scenes aside.
Faux Pas #2-Ok granted...I say Lucas did better in this respect...character interrelationships. Quite frankly, I saw very little of what made the "fellowship' an actual fellowship other than the 'annointing' at Rivenden(another place I didnt know the name of til I went to chat after the movie). It seemed to me the reaction by the fellowship to Gandaph's 'passing' was amusingly exaggerated(eps with the violins in the background)..when you consider that half of them had only met the man (what seemed like) days ago. I saw nothing to hint at any nature of a relationship between most of the characters,excpet for maybe Frodo and Gandalph. The boys meet Strider..they go off with him for no apparent reason. Strider has a lady love..they have a scene for seemingly no reason as I was not given any back info to show me why I should care about them. It seemed to me that Arwen was a horribly contrived characer...her only raison d'entre being to save Frodo's life...Deus ex Machina to the nth degree. Then Gimli(another name I learned after the movie)utters the trite 'the felloship is broken' while the whole time I'm like 'well...its only been a few days..that was a quick dissolvement and besides...its not like they are chums anyway'. It just seemed to me that the movie threw conclusions at you, but gave you no reasonable build up or preparation. I mean..come on...we see them travel on foot on a mountain, but after that all of a sudden they have a horse named Bill that apparently is dear to them?!?Please.
Faux Pas #3 Too Many smoke and mirrors at the expense of storytelling-Here Lucas and Jackson both failed miserably. But...at least where Lucas did it, he did it well. I really cant beleive comments that say the visuals were breath taking. Yes some of the scenery was really good, and some of the CGI was grand. But the rendering in some of the scenes was just horrible-I mean..In Ep 1 I know everything was not real, but at least the parts that werent were not GLARINGLY fake..the scene with the cave troll was just laughable. The Balrog...good, but how can I be scared of this 'monster' when 9 character have just outrun 1000 baddies....and no the graphics were not 'groundbreaking' for it either. The cinematography during the CGI scenes too often seemed blurry...I felt sorry for the folks up front during those scenes. So, on the whole I felt the graphics were derivative and in some cases dowright bad. I saw better eye candy in Shrek and FF this year. But, so as not to seem to nitpicky Ill say this...the effects I can live with, as long as I get a good story with good characters..story was good but woefully failed in part 2 for me.
Faux Pas #4-this one belongs to Jackson alone...Condensation of an Epic Story. And no, I dont mean condensation in terms of what was or was not in the books b/c I havent read them. I mean in terms how...if this story is so epic, sweping and grand...how come it feels like it took 10 days? We are told how far it is to get to Rivvendale(i think?)..yet, three days later wham! here we are. Gandalph leaves frodo, journeys to a place seemingly 2 blocks away from Mt. Doom and comes back to the shire in what seems like hours. We are told the Fellowship are in for a long perilous journey..yet seemingly 2 days later, there they are in the mines, halfway there. Now granted...time is a concern..but surely they could have done something...some scenes of them 'on the road'(and not of them just arriving at the place they need to be), maybe some change of seasons.the only snow I saw was at the top of a mountain..yet, when they visit Cate Blanchett it seems sunny and warm again like it was when they set out.Or how about even some wear and tear on the characters..something, a voice over saying how many 'moons' had passed, something. Given the pacing of the movie I lost alot of the 'epic scope' Id hoped a film like this would possess. It made it feel horribly rushed like everything in between battles was just the set up to get to another battle....Like another movie I know...like The Mummy.-AN 7 out of 10 stars