"Great! Where are we going?"

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2005)

The Lord of the Rings saga ranks up there with the Star Wars trilogy as ground-breaking film experiences. Unlike Star Wars, there was no surprise that the first chapter, The Fellowship of the Ring, would do well at the box office. The strongest of the Lord of the Rings movies, the results of years of work by director Peter Jackson and his team, The Fellowship of the Ring introduces the important characters and introduces the mythology surrounding the hobbits and the elves and the dwarfs and the various other creations of JRR Tolkien's mind when he wrote the series of books. The story can be summed up as the struggle by one hobbit (a shorter, hairier, way too optimistic human), Frodo (Elijah Wood) comes in possession of the mystical ring that contains so much power that is has to be destroyed. The problem is, however, the ring is so powerful, it wants to be found by the evil ones who live in Middle Earth. I liked the mystical plot, the lore that goes along with the ring, I even had interest in the various characters that inhabit Middle Earth. I just wished that the movie was about a half hour shorter. Less with Fellowship, compared to the other movies in the series, there is some fat that could have been cut from all of the Rings movies, 3 hours a movie seems a bit over the top. Fans of the books will eat it up, but the casual viewer has a hard time sitting through it all. The movie looks great, fantastic landscapes (mostly of New Zealand), and special effects that look seamless. Hugo Weaving is the star of the film as far as I'm concerned, he plays the head elf Elrond, you will remember him as Agent Smith from the Matrix films. He delivers his lines the best, easiest for him as he has the most serious lines, the lines that move the plot along and provides back story. Science Fiction and Fantasy movies have always been a thorny issue when it comes to who will accept the film and watch it. Star Wars showed that Sci-Fi could be financially viable, it wasn't just the nerds in the back of the classroom going to the Saturday Matinees. Lord of the Rings has brought the fantasy genre to the same level, and had a good start with Fellowship of the Ring.