One of the 20 best films ever made!

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2004)

Well, it has been three years since the Lord of the Rings graced our screens. And in those three years, our film landscape has literally been dominated by the series. There have been other films of importance, but nothing that can truly compare with the scope and the sheer grandiose manner in which LOTR has inundated us with. Simply put, there has not been more of a domination of films since Star Wars and its original sequels hogged grosses and headlines from 1977-1983. I am an avid and eager contributor to imdb and I love to write reviews but have purposely not said anything about the three LOTR films because I wanted to wait until I had seen all three of them before commenting on them. Now that I have seen all three, let me begin with FOTR.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a thing of beauty. This is a film that is nearly perfect in every way. Beginning with the characters, this film takes us on a labyrinthine journey through middle earth and part of the fun is meeting everyone that is going to play a part in the story down the road. I think the EE on DVD is an even better film than the theatrical version and if you have a chance to see it, even though it is 4 hours long, do yourself a favour and do so. There is much more explained than what you see in the theatrical version.
FOTR introduces us to the hobbits, to Gandalf the wizard and his adversary Sauruman and ultimately to the great eye, Sauron. Also along the journey to Mordor are Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn and the three other hobbits, Samwies, Merry and Pippin.
The one element of FOTR that struck me is that it is a film about discovery. The journey begins here and it is that much more fun to see the genesis of the story and the genesis of the characters. In each of the three films, each character grows a bit at a time. In FOTR, we get to see the start of this journey. Frodo is just a scared hobbit thrust into a great deed here. In ROTK he grows into an honourable and stoic character, but in here, he is scared and feels alone, even with his fellowship of nine.
Perhaps one of the main reasons that makes this film so much better than the last two, in my opinion, is that it perfectly blends action and character into a beautiful narrative and it makes you feel for the characters you are watching. Gandalf's fate in this film is a heartwrenching scene and Boromir's is even tougher to get through. I shed a few tears at the end of this film.
FOTR should have won a plethora of Oscars in 2001 and it is a shame that it lost to A Beautiful Mind. I think that in 10 years, no one will remember this as Ron Howard's film that took the Oscar. But FOTR will be remembered as one of the best films of the last 20 years. There is a bit of everything in the film and for those that crave excellence in film, they need look no further than Fellowship of the Ring. I have it at number 9 on my all time list and that is saying something. This is truly a remarkable film. I have always thought that the books were just okay stories but to see what Jackson and his team of writers has managed to do, is truly remarkable. In the book, the best part of the story was the meeting of the Fellowship. This was at the council of Elrond and it is also one of the best scenes in the film. This is where we get to meet Boromir and Legolas and Gimli. In the book, I remember the council scene being close to 100 pages in length. Much of it was just talk and in the film, Jackson has managed to keep much of the intrigue with scenes like this, but condensing them to fit into a 3 hour film. This is just one of the nuances of the film that make it such a fine piece of film making.
While I still believe that Star Wars is the best fantasy series ever filmed, at least Lord of the Rings is a voice for today's generation and they have a film that they can relate to and call their own so that in 30 years from now the next great fantasy epic is unleashed, the debate can rage all over again, which is the best of all time?
FOTR is one of the best films of all time.
10/10