Too long ?! What do you mean ?! If it had an hour more it could have been perfect !!

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2002)

I really can´t understand why some people dislike the movie because they think it´s too long. What do you mean too long ?! Have you people read the novel at least ?! Perhaps if you did, you should have noticed the huuuuuuuge amount of extraordinary content that was left out from the first volume alone ! Because as an adaptation i agree with the persons who say it´s not that great. It´s not. But for it to be as good as this adaptation deserved to be, this first movie would have to have at least one hour more. Actually, a couple of hours more, such is the details that were left out from the original novel.
But books and movies are two different media which will never mix no matter how good movie-adaptations are, so to my knowledge and opinion, this movie adaptation of LOTR is as good as it could have been done. It´s "perfect", it couldn´t have been done beter ! Peter Jackson has all my respects and congratulations because considering the task he had ahead he performed almost a miracle. He didn´t ruin the books.
He simply made a movie called Lord of the Rings, wich is based on a great book who couldn´t ever be well adapted to moving pictures. I can bet , that if all the details from the novel were in the movie, everybody would say that the movie sucked because it wouldn´t have had that action-adventure feeling it now has, and it would have had a more literary story telling pace. Not that it would bothered me much, as i would love to have seen all the richness of Tolkien´s text in the screen, but if that was like that, this movie would have been a comercial flop. Someone would even call it an Art House movie, i can bet.
So the way it was done, i think it´s "perfect". Ok the characters are shallow, but if you´re a fan of the novel you already know their background and you´ll fill in the blacks in your mind, (it happend to me at least). For those who never read the novel, (or any other book in their life), i´m sure they couldn´t care less about character development and they just want to see some action, battles and special effects. And so they have. OK, it was the most commercial route for Jackson to go, but really, what have you done instead ? The action bits are very well integrated, the plot might seem shallow (to those who read the books), but i don´t see any other way of adapting a novel such as this. Because if you forget about the books for a second, you´ll notice that this movie has much more story in it than the usual Pseudo-Fantasy (for kids) Hollywood plastic unimaginative crap we get throwned at our faces normaly,(see Willow or Dungeons&Dragons. People seem to forget that this is a movie, not a book.
In fact i think this movie with all its flaws has even a great thing going for it. Besides the fact that it doesn´t ruins the book it even makes people who never read before want to pick up the novels and read them. I know of people who never read anything other than sports papers in their lives who are now devouring everything that Tolkien wrote. And i never saw any movie do that before !!!
Visually i personally think its a work of art, with incredible adaptations of the work of Alan Lee and John Howe on the screen as i never thought possible. Actualy LOTR might not be a good adaptation of the original text, but i don´t believe anyone really thinks it´s a bad adaptation of the geographical settings that Tolkien described, as to me personaly, i never before had seen a movie in wich the images resembled so much what i had imagined when reading the novel that originated them ,(with the exception maybe of The Name of the Rose and Dune, perhaps). So enjoy this movie and read the books, because this is one of those rare cases where seeing a movie doesn´t spoil at all the story and you can read the novel afterwards to grasp and be amazed at what was deleted in the movies. Chances are that you´ll end up loving both of them.
Oh by the way, if you loved LOTR, book and movie, don´t miss the BBC RADIO VERSION ,audio dramatization of the novels, because you won´t believe your ears as it´s a fantastic adaptation of the novel, and of course much more detailed than the movie. Lots of actors, great sound effects and a fantastic soundtrack that it´s everything the one from the movie should have been ,(as to me the movie soundtrack is the only "weak" thing in Peter Jackson´s adaptation). If you think listening to a radio drama is boring, then you never heard this BBC radio version ! 14 CDs of pure high fantasy. Buy it at Amazon or at the BBC site and you won´t be disappointed. Just make sure you buy the one with Ian Holm wich plays Bilbo Baggins in the movie, because in the radio version he played Frodo magnificently. Be careful not to buy the american radio version wich is an inferior product, buy the BBC one. Besides it´s great to listen while you wait for the release of the movie in DVD.
If you haven´t seen the movie, forgget about bad reviews, this is a great fantasy movie. After this one, Fantasy has achieved a new status, and i doubt that will it be connected by Hollywood as a childrens product from now on ,as it has been done right up untill now. LOTR is for Fantasy what STAR WARS was to Space Opera back in the seventies. A great movie.