Unfamiliar Fan Enjoys

Rating: Null/10 (24 December 2001)

For all those of you who have never read any of the books in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, what I have to say might be of particular interested to you. I've never read any of The Lord of the Rings books. My dad read to me when I was three years old the first ten pages of The Hobbit, so I knew what one of those was, but other than that and the trailer, I had no knowledge of any of the characters of the plot of the film. Truthfully, I think this is the best way to go into the film for maximum enjoyment. My eyes were glued to the screen and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I had no clue what was to happen next, and with each scene I was more surprised by what events unfolded than the previous. Overall, I loved the movie. It quickly became one of my favorite movies of all time, being amongst others such as Star Wars, The Matrix and the independent flick, Memento. I did have some problems with the film though, some mentioned by huge fans of the series, others hardly at all.
First being were with the characters. I thought that Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn and Sam were well developed. They were well acted, and I actually came to care for the characters, a rarity for me in movie watching; however, the two characters who had the potential for being the coolest in the film, Legolas and Gamli, were barely developed at all. It seemed like they were just dropped right in the middle of the story for the mere purpose of aids in battle. Legolas got a good amount of screentime during the fight sequences due to his jaw-dropping archery skills, but Gamli was hardly present. You could tell that there was some tension between the two when they were first introduced, but it was never explained nor further pursued in the film. Apparently in the book there is a great deal of history between the two and as a result, there is tons of comical bickering between the two.
Second was the plot. While the storytelling was excellent, there were some things that troubled me. Throughout the film, there were many mentions to events that occurred in prequel novel, The Hobbit, and in scenes from the book that were cut from the script. I thought this was rather confusing at points, although it wasn't exactly necessary to the comprehension of the film. Also as I watched the movie, it seemed that to tell the entire story, there needed to be more. It was obvious that three was something missing, and many scenes seemed rushed.
My last complaint about the movie would be the special effects. While many people claim that they were spectacular, I was not impressed in the least bit. The scenes in which blue screen was used, I thought it was quite obvious as the characters were all in differnet lighting, making the thing scene seem awkward. Also, other than the cave troll which looked great, all the other computer animated monsters seemed pretty fake compared to what we've seen in recent cinema. They were either hardly detailed, or simply looked too cartoony compared to the rest of the scene. Really I think the only scenes that had impressive special effects were those in which Frodo wore the ring and when the camera made sweeps of the landscape, especially those which recreated fantasy elements from the book such as Sarumon's tower and the sort. In my mind, I think ILM (responsible Star Wars and basically every other film in Hollywood) could've done a much better job, especially with the integration of characters into scenes and the creation of believable monsters.
Actually, thats about all the complaints I have about the film. Overall, I think The Fellowship of the Ring was an excellent movie. I loved just about every minute, and despite the fact that they were forced to remove a lot of the elements from the story, I think the director did an amazing job with what he had and he was able to do in order to maintain the audience's attention span. I definitely recommend this movie to anyone, even those of you who are not normally fantasy or science fiction fans. The storytelling is fantastic, and for those few characters that were actually developed, they were spectacular.