"..this is a classic quest and a wondrous moral tale of how power corrupts, beautifully realized by a wonderful cast and a visionary director."

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2007)

One of the most ambitious productions in movie history, Peter Jackson's movie trilogy beginning with The Fellowship of the Ring is a masterpiece of traditional direction and performance mixed with computer-generated imagery. It deserves to be remembered not just for its scale but also for the truly amazing piece of cinema that it is. Based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic books of hobbits, elves, and other creatures who populate the land known as Middle Earth, the trilogy (The Lord of the Rings) was filmed over 16 months in New Zealand with a huge cast and crew assigned to make three movies for a $300 million budget. Planned to appeal to audiences who had never read Tolkien's work, it would also feature all the detail and minutae fans of the books would demand. Jackson succeeded at both,delivering an old-fashioned series of epics-the trilogy released over three years-created using the best of modern movie-making. He was perhaps the perfect man to bring Tolkien's world to the screen, having delivered darkly fascinating movies like Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners,after his earlier experiments in gory schlock horror-Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Braindead-before taking on this huge project. The Fellowship of the Ring is black, twisting and dark and sinister and scary, richly detailed, so real you feel you could reach into the movie screen and touch the hilltop house at Bag End or the elegant trees of Rivendell. The story begins with a hobbit-a small in stature, hairy-footed creature-named Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), who is entrusted with a ring that gives the wearer great power. It is also a dangerous ring, so Frodo and his friend Sam (Sean Astin) must leave their home and travel great distances to the one place, Mordor, where it can be destroyed. They are accompanied on their journey by a fellowship elected to protect them: Wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), warriors Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Boromir (Sean Bean), elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and dwarf Gimli (Johns Rhys-Davies). The Middle Earth cast strides through spectacular imagery as the group goes on its perilous journey across snowcapped mountains, through the threatening Caves of Moria, along rivers, and through valleys, creating a living, breathing world as they go. A much-loved story, this is a classic quest and a wondrous moral tale of how power corrupts, beautifully realized by a wonderful cast and a visionary director.