Great movie, surprised by some of the poor reviews

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2001)

I thought the movie was great, but I can't believe some of the bad reviews. I'm not going to go on and on about how good the movie, effects and other aspects of the movie are. I would rather add some comments about the negative reviews. 1. Movie length & character development - Many say it's too long. While we all know not everyone has read the book, this movie is billed as an epic adventure (epics are generally longer than just plain adventures). If you have read the book you would say to do the story justice you would need a 5 part, 2 hour each nite mini- series....... While Character development should be a seperate item, I think it falls with movie length. They had to cut certain things to get the movie down to three hours and some things couldn't be cut because they come into play in future movies. My opinion - this movie did the best it possibly could have in the SHORT amount of time it had. Something always will have to be cut for time restraints and someone will always think they cut the wrong thing, I think they did a great job. 2. Complaints about the powerful "old geezer" wizards. Have an open mind folks, these are not your typical spell casting old men. You don't even have to read the books to understand that this is a story, and they don't have to be the "typical" wizards you are used to. Gandalf was supposed to be a unimposing looking yet extremely powerful old wizard as was his conterpart in the tower (who is not Sauran, yet the name is similar). You should have picked up on that with the Bilbo encounter over the ring. Gandalf is one of the most powerful people in middle earth, and all appearances can be very deceiving. 3. Complaints about the story going here and there. (Continuity).....Very true to the book, and in fact some concessions where made for the movie. Whats wrong with traveling, fighting, traveling, fighting? I wonder how much time some of you think may have passed during this film. I don't recall them really making much mention of time during the movie, but perhaps they should have. Do you think it was weeks or months? The mountain pass alone was a few months. Maybe they didn't convey the time as best they could have but it still doesn't mean a movie can't do what this one did. You people are probably the ones that complained about Pulp Fiction going to and fro because you couldn't understand the story. Ahh, when I started this I was going to go more indepth, but I have more important things to do.