"It comes in pints"

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2012)

When it was released a decade ago, The Fellowship of the Ring was a massive hit with the both critics and the general movie-going public, two groups who generally ask for nothing more than a good yarn well told. However the reviews and box office figures did not quite reflect one crucial demographic – the geeks. There were a lot of people, die-hard fans of the Tolkien books, who went to see the movie purely to see how faithful it was to the book. And then they spent a lot of time complaining about how much it wasn't. This review is dedicated to those discerning folk.
It's true, there are a lot of changes from the novel, but most of these stem from the fact that movies are not books, and they do things differently. One of the most notable (and most frequently complained about) omissions was the story of Tom Bombadil. But while Tom's tale was nice it's a diversion unrelated to the overall plot that a movie, designed to be enjoyed in one sitting, cannot really afford to make. All in all this is a cunning adaptation, brief compared to the book but faithful to its tone. Pippin and Merry's first appearance, setting off fireworks in a tent, is an invention for the screen, but it is a quick visual way of introducing them. The first encounter with the black riders is turned into a chase, just enough of an action peak that the movie needs at that point. Another clever idea is to make a kind of unofficial character out one of the orcs, which gives the showdown at the end of this movie a bit more a dramatic thrust.
Stylistically this is very much a movie of its time. To see a 21st century action movie, you'd think a camera now only holds three feet of film. An edit comes every couple of seconds whether the scene demands it or not. Add to that some dizzying camera moves, and this is really not a good movie to watch if you have a headache or a hangover. This isn't to say director Peter Jackson doesn't have a good sense of timing with his technique. His greatest strength seems to be in creating creepy tension, notable examples being the black rider's horse sidling into view as the hobbits cower by the roadside, and the approach of the orcs in Moria. He pulls a neat trick in the final battle scene, at the key moment switching from the rapid action of the fight to still shots of Sean Bean with the melee raging around him. It gives a much more emotional impact to the turn of events than Tolkien's lofty account.
A large part of the appeal of The Fellowship of the Ring and its sequels is the creation of a world for them to take place in. It was right of Jackson to actually take the production to the vast New Zealish wildernesses rather than just make do with a strip of backlot, frequently hitting us with the grand sense of uninhabited openness that is rarely seen outside of Westerns. The CGI (something I'm not normally of a fan of) comes into its own with the creation of caverns and castles packed with texture and detail that, like the landscapes, captures the imagination with their sheer scale. It's not all good though. Places like The Shire and Rivendell are beautiful to the point oftwee – sometimes even verging on Thomas Kincade levels of kitsch. Jackson and his design team were certainly far better at portraying evil.
The problems facing the cast of this picture are similar to those of a historical epic. There is too much nobility and stolid dialogue to really bring much passion to the roles, and some of the players are more wooden than Treebeard (Orlando Bloom is the worst offender here). Best of the bunch is Ian McKellen, who really brings out the warmth in Gandalf, helping to make him the only human-seeming character in the whole piece. I also like the performances of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan who bring some jocular naturalism to the parts of Pippin and Merry.
If anything, the biggest problems with The Fellowship of the Ring are problems it has in common with the novel. Tolkien's work, well written though it is, does lack a certain humanity and emotional complexity - the constipated formality of the elves; the orcs, one-dimensional baddies (portrayed here of course with cockney accents); the rather tiresome presentation of the ring as some forbidden treat, the lack of developed female characters. I'm well aware that these are the very things that many people love about Lord of the Rings, but to me and many others it gives the work a rather distant and soulless feel. These flaws are largely carried over to the movie versions. However, the fact that Peter Jackson's adaptation has done some work to chip away at the stiffness of the novels, adding a hint of playfulness with some new dialogue, cutting out a lot of the stuffy proclamations, throwing in the occasional character reaction, is very much to the movie's credit. Yes, this version deviates from the books, but where it does so it improves.