Awesome

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2001)

It's not the film of the book, but it's a fabulous film and I really, really enjoyed it.
Having read the book 12 times in 20 years, I obviously have my favourite characters and chapters. I was both very keen and a bit apprehensive to see how it'd all been interpreted, and I was delighted with the outcome.
I could have sat through an extra hour to see some scenes dealt with in more detail: the Inn at Bree; the battle on the hill with the ring wraiths; and particularly Lothlorian and Galadriel.
However, as entertaining as these chapters are in the book, they have been slimmed down to keep the main plot and characters moving along.
There are also some improvements: Merry and Pippin came over very well, they're not the upper-class twits of Tolkien's "Fellowship". The party was handled brilliantly: straight to the point, without getting bogged down in detail.
Arwen's character has been involved in the main plot which redresses Tolkein's male-character bias (in the Fellowship at least).
Moria and the balrog is the stand-out sequence for me, quite stunning. Bringing forward Saruman's involvement from the Two Towers to the Fellowship was also an inspired idea, and Christopher Lee was in great form, never better.
I've read some uncomplimentary things about the acting, but I thought all the main characters were superbly represented (especially Gandalf and Bilbo).
Would Tolkein have approved? No, I think he'd have HATED it, because so many of the key character-building scenes are missed out (mainly the woods, the barrow-wights, the Inn at Bree and how Bill the pony got his name, and Lothlorian).
The film is a lot more action-oriented than the book, and all the better (as a film, as opposed to a story) for it.
To have recreated the book in detail would have needed 6 to 8 hours, and achieving what was done in "only" three hours is a stroke of genius.
My one and only complaint: why do I have to wait a year to see the Two Towers....?
My hope: the DVD release has lots and lots of deleted scenes added into the main film (not on disk 2) to flesh out the storyline even further.
A well deserved, justified and not-at-all-hyped ten out of ten.