As true as it could

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2001)

There has a lot been said about Peter Jackson´s adaption of Tolkiens epic story Fellowship of the Ring many things good, others bad and not all wholeheartedly true.
There are a few things that many naisayers of the film are eager to point out. I find that much of this critisism is not very well founded. One of them is that the film is totally without female characters. That is true, but we must remember that the story was written in another time when female characters were not considered essential to stories as this. Something like changing the sex of one of the main characters is something that any serious filmmaker does not do.
Someone has written that the movie is boring and too long, lingering with too much detail and talking, not action. Let me remind you that The Lord of the Rings is not an action comic book but an epic story of friendship, hardship and triumph of good over evil. If you do not have the tolerance for sitting trough a movie that has a STORY go see a Brucheimer flick and read your Marvel comics.
One critic said that there was no real plot in the book and even had some rather childish coments about Mount Doom being a silly name along with other transparent names in the film/book. Again, I can not stress enough that this book was written BEFORE Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars, and was the FIRST mainstream fantasy book. Of course the names are transparent! That´s the point! Only in a bad storyline do you have to hide the true meaning behind to much symbolism.
Some have also said that the book is not that good in the first place. Well, I don´t know how to reply to this in other way than by saying that LOTR was chosen one of the best literary work in english on last century, beating the likes of Hemmingway to the top spot. This might not be a book that you like or a story that you can relate to, but please, give credid where credid is due.
That brings me to the next thing. Do not, I repeat NOT question why a character is in this movie because he/she had so little screen time and you don´t get the point of the character (Galadriel). Everything will come out in the open in later movies.
And please PLEASE don´t tell me that Star Wars is a better film than LOTR! Star Wars is a fine action flick with some VERY GOOD FX, but in the field of writing mr. Lucas just is no Tolkien, sorry to break it to you but his movies are the prototype Hollywood movies, Lucas did not copy Hollywood, they copied him!
Of course LOTR has some flaws, but bad swordfights, crappy FX or the absence of a plot are not one of them.