What cinema was invented for.

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

There are two types of people who will go to see this film, those who have read the books and those who haven't. I represent the latter half. So if you are in the same position as myself, why should you bother watching a film about Orc's, Dwarf's and Hobbit's. Well to start with this film is visually outstanding. CGI has progressed a lot in the last 5 years, but this film doesn't lavishly flaunt computer graphics in your face, in fact it will have you sitting there thinking 'How did they do that?'. The scenery will leave you breathless, from the snowy mountains to the boat ride down the river past the statues of the kings. But it's the attention to detail put into the sets. The Shires look like a million dollar version of the Teletubbies (which is a good thing believe it or not), and the camera work flying through the land of Mordoc is particularly impressive. Yes it has it's downfalls. The prologue is very good and gives you a really good history of the story to come, but the next half hour introducing Gandalf and the Hobbits drags for much longer than it should do, but the firework display is very impressive and leaves you hoping that one day you could buy fireworks like that. As a non Tolkien I felt that a lot of the characters had no back story, which left you wondering why they were there in the first place. This is most prominent in the council meeting where you are greeted with three new characters who you don't know a lot about. And also there is the point that the film has no ending, but this can be forgiven because there are another two episodes to come. Hearing what fans of the book have said about it adding parts to the story, like Arwen (Liv Tyler) getting more story than she should have, really don't ruin the story, in fact I think they improve it. But I didn't care, she looks absolutely beautiful in this film, and gives one of her best performances of her career. In fact all of the actors perform their socks off, particularly Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn who would be my bet for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. But my hat goes off to the whole of the fellowship, they convince you that they are really there and not just talking to a tennis ball against a blue screen. But the ultimate accolade should be given to Peter Jackson, Spielberg, Lucas, Scott and Cameron should be quaking in their directors chairs because this guy has just raised the stakes in Hollywood. In fact I think i'm gonna watch Bad Taste again on video to see where this genius came from. If he doesn't win an Oscar then it's daylight robbery.