Awestruck

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2001)

I must say I walked into this movie with the greatest reservation. I had read TLOTR multiple times; and just pondering the amount of effort it would take to translate this epic foundation of Fantasy was mind boggling. I was afraid that either it would not look anything like it was discribed in the book(IE; the world, races, language) or the story would be hopeless corrupted for the sake of the corporate buck(can enyone say Episode 1, or as I sub-titled it: the longest commercial ever filmed?)
after 3 hours of watching this movie one thing was abundantly clear in my mind; THIS WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS ONE OF THE GREATEST FANTASY EPICS EVER FILMED. Everything look like I imagined it or better. The acting was superb; all the actors looked like they put serious effort in understanding their character. Now several people have trashed Liv Tylor's performance in the movie, but you have to understand that she actually has the hardest role in the movie; she had nothing to go by; nothing to truly draw upon to understand her character. Not only that all the die hard fans would and prolly still have a problem with her character's inclusion in the plot. I actually thought it added a nice spin on Aragorn's character; showing his love for Arwem. Truth be told I never understood why he chose her at the end of the series(not to spoil it for any of you; but then again read the freaking books; they have only been out for 1/2 a century). I have to say next to Gandalf my favorite character was Legolas; he was awesome as the ass thumping Elf(that scene when he ran an orc through the eye with an arrow, pulled it out and then shot it at another one comming at him was awesome)
That being said there was only one truly "huh?" moment in the movie. It was the whole end sequence. While I understand why Jackson made Frodo tell Aragorn his motives for breaking the Fellowship, I personally beleive that the Original ending from the book was more dramatic and would have been a perfect cliffhanger for the next movie(after all int he end of book one Aragorn, Gilmi and Legolas don't have any real idea what happened to all the hobbits.)
But in the end I have only one thing to say; eat your heart out George Lucas, Peter Jackson made a better movie with more hassle than you did you hack. You should sit that man down and learn from him on how to make a real fantasy epic.