Great spectacle, bad script

Rating: 6/10 (22 December 2001)

Tracking all the making of information leading up to the film, it seemed like Jackson was doing a great job. The scenery, props, casting, makeup, and effects all seemed beautifully authentic. And in action, they deliver. But the script (it's always a danger when you see three writers and one of them is the director) spoils the magic.
It's more than making Arwen's role more significant (and a completely different character) in a blatant attempt to beef up the roles for women. I didn't like that, but women's roles are admittedly sadly lacking in the original story. It's that Jackson puts his clumsy fingerprints all over Tolkien's themes and tells the story from the perspective of Men. Apparently, modern moviegoers need to identify with their race. (Side note: all the critics who say how the movie has preserved the magic of the books probably haven't read them since college.)
The relationship between the four hobbits isn't set up at all in the movie; aside from Frodo the other three hobbits seem thrown into the quest by chance. Rather than being a reluctant, conflicted hero, Frodo is praised by all the other characters but actually does little but squeal, get stabbed, and look on the elves in wonder. Saruman (a lesser character in the fiction who only appears the first book through Gandalf's recollection) takes up far too much time in the movie. And by the end we've seen Sauron's eye so much I wonder there's anything to reveal of the dark lord in the second and third movies. I expected changes, but I fail to see the rationale for many of Jackson's edits--they don't make the story better or the action flow more smoothly.
The Lord of the Rings is an elegiac tale of the passing of magic from the world and of the heroic struggles of those races passing from the world to preserve goodness. In Jackson's eyes, history is told from the perspective of the victors, the Men. Hobbits, who drive the action in the books, are along for the ride while Aragorn, Boromir, et al are the real protagonists in the movie.
I give Jackson full credit for taking on a task of this scale and achieving an epic feel. If only he'd started with a script as good as his scenery.