No one could have done it better

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2001)

This movie was great. I am a huge Tolkien fan and I have been looking forward to this movie for years. I have seen the movies twice and I highly recommend that others do the same. I liked it better the second time because I felt like I wasn't critiquing the movie as much and I could just enjoy it. It wasn't a perfect movie and it wasn't a perfect adaptation of the books, but nothing could ever live up to what I consider to be the best books written by a human author of all time. Peter Jackson, the cast, and the crew really did a stellar job on this one. With such a short time to work with they brought forth the main themes of the book, developed the main characters very well, and showed incredible attention to detail. The whole time I kept wishing they could slow down and show more but I realized in order to make it watchable in a theater they had to keep things moving. I really hope that the DVD includes a little more footage to help flesh out the story even more. I thought the omissions from the book were necessary and I think they made the right choices. The cast really fit my ideas of the characters and the acting altogether was great. Ian McKellen as Gandalf and Sean Bean as Boromir really stand out in my mind. I wish they had more time to flesh out some of the minor characters such as Gimli and Legolas as well as the hobbits but you can't have everything in a three hour movie. I am a huge Star Wars fan but I still think that these special effects were the best I have ever seen. The Massive battle scenes as well as the CGI characters were utterly astonishing. But like I stated above, the movie wasn't perfect. The imperfections though were mainly conflicts with my interpretation of the books. The Lothlorien sequence I thought was too short and Galadriel went way too crazy. The other minor imperfections are far outweighed by the combination of the great acting, excellent special effects, strong story line, splendid score, and all around entertainment, and that is what a movie is about, entertainment. I am so looking forward to the conclusion of this story and I am so glad that the group that put this movie together has done all the movies because I don't think anyone could have done it better.