One final observation

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2002)

I sat through it again to see if it improved on acquaintance. It doesn't. I noticed something new, though: Boromir's repeated use of the phrase "my people". The peace that the rest of Middle Earth enjoys is paid for "with the blood of my people"; all that he asks for, in the end, is "the strength to defend my people". He's not the only character to use the phrase, either.
Those who have read and understood "The Lord of the Rings" will immediately spot the problem here. Tolkein's characters would not, in these contexts, say "my people"; they would instead say "my country". (Even if they used an expression like "the men of Gondor" they would MEAN something much closer to "my country" than to "my people".) The distinction is crucial. "My people" is the language of an elected representative pushing the interests of her constituency or by a nomadic chieftain bartering for the interests of his tribe - but what the central characters in "The Lord of the Rings" love and are fighting to save is something far greater than a collection of members of the group to which they happen to belong. Hobbits love other hobbits, yes; but they also love, just as strongly, the Shire as a whole: the land, the trees, the streams, the customs, the place. Boromir is not just a thug with a gang but the inhabitant and servant of a kingdom: he loves its capital city, its mountains, its language. Characters in "The Lord of the Rings" have roots in a particular place. Remove the sense of rootedness, the love of and respect for nature, the terribly sad possibility of exile or loss of home, and the generally accepted feeling that some causes are larger than the people whose interests they happen to serve - in short, remove everything that's implied by "my country" that isn't implied by "my people" - and there's really not much left.
That's why the phrase "my people" sounded so jarring every time I heard it - and I think it jarred on me even the first time I saw the film, although I didn't stop to think why. The fact that neither the writers nor the director noticed the jarring effect is evidence that they didn't know what they were doing, and is perhaps the most direct symptom of a failure of vision that explains almost every other flaw: the fact that Elrond has turned into a narrow-minded politician, the jumbled use of unrelated locations, the excessive (and unconvincing, and unattractive) CGI, the scenes which should occur during the day taking place at night, the insufficient time devoted to the opening chapters.
Those who haven't read the book won't notice what particular elements are missing. But it's hard not to notice the absence of a soul.