Liked, Didnt Love It

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2001)

Right up front - I give it an 8 out of 10. So much promise to be a masterpiece, but it just fell short in a few places. Yes, I am a person who read and loved the books, nothing can replace that enjoyment, but I am looking it here as with an eye to how I projected it as a pure cinematic experience.
The Good 1. Sauron was great, as evil and frightening as could be imagined. 2. The casting was great, even liked Frodo despite my reservations. Strider/Aragorn was just as a imagined. Didn't even mind the invented Arwen scenes, they worked well. 3. The scenery was beautiful, Rivendell especially was better than I pictured with its spectacular vistas. 4. The monster at the entrance to Moria was as creepy as I imagined. Moria itself was perfect though not given enough time. Loved the Cave Troll, and, as for the Balrog, I couldn't have imagined it any better.
The Bad 1. Lothlorien -- it was so brief in the movie, but so beautifully described in the book, I got no sense of it. It was kind of dream-like, as it is in the book, but I expected a vibrant happy place where they felt safe, never got that. There was never any time to sense the feeling of being there. I wanted a lot more, but all I will remember from that scene was Galadriel freakin' out over the ring. 2. Wanted more of Moria. What was given was wonderful, just wanted more sense of being there, wanted about 45 minutes of that instead of 15 minutes. It could have built much more atmosphere and doom. 3. Too much Saruman. Too much of him building an Orc army. I don't recall that much attention being given to that in the book. I didn't need 5 fly-byes of the Orc Army being built. Way too much time was spent there. 4. Fight scenes - Some were good, but too many were like attention-deficit disorder scenes, slow it down a bit, give us a broader sense of what is going on. 5. Rivendell council was ok, but spend a little more time to understand the characters we're going to spend 2 more movies with. Its a Fellowship, I want to feel more like I know and like the team. (I know I do, but the average viewer doesn't). Give us a little more inside story to grow to like them. 6. Tom Bombadil would've provided a few minutes of some much-needed comic relief and some stress relief. The movie made me feel like Orcs were on their rear for every second, viewers needed a break for a few minutes.