A technical achievement and excellent adaptation of the book

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2002)

One important bit of advice when watching LOTR:FOTR is to find a comfortable theater. But having done that, I didn't notice that the movie was 3 hours long. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
From discussion with my friends, I found that everyone liked The Fellowship of the Ring whether they had read the book or not. It stands on its own as a great movie. But it's a faithful telling of the story from the book. Nearly all the dialog is right out of the book. It's out of sequence in a number of places but I see that as completely excusable since they still told the same story. It couldn't be exactly the same as the book and still be a great movie. The way the story unfolds keeps your attention.
The effort that went into this movie was tremendous. The directing, casting, acting, music and effects were all excellent. For example, things which were supposed to look old or ancient, did. Hobbits looked about half the height of men. Etc.
The graphics lead me to think this film is a landmark technical achievement too. In the 70's Star Wars raised the bar for non-computer effects and integrating music into the action. In the 80's Tron and The Last Starfighter introduced whole segments of the movie completely generated by computer. In the 90's Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park realistically mixed computer graphics with filmed footage. Now in what I think is raising the bar for a new decade, Lord of the Rings takes that integration to a new level whenever you see whole armies or large numbers of Orcs on the move, or other indoor and outdoor footage that I won't mention since they would be spoilers...