Completely missed the spirit of the books

Rating: 1/10 (28 January 2002)

I have to give Peter Jackson some credit for his effort; he attempted the impossible, and made an admirable attempt at capturing that which has been previously failed (Bashki).
I think that there is wide consensus that he did a very good job of capturing the scenery of Middle Earth and I for one was appreciative of his visualizations of Lothlorien, Saruman's Tower, the Shire.
But I have read the books: three times. Once as a thirteen year old, once in my twenties and again 2 years ago. I have fond memories of laying in bed late at night, with the windows open - smelling the summer country breeze and reading about Gollum sneaking thru windows and snatching infants; the panic and confusion of having to leave the Shire after there is still no word from Gandalf; of the drunken disaster at Bree where Frodo dances like a fool and falls; of the antagonism between Gimli the dwarf and Legolas the elf, and their cultural dislike of each other that morphs into tolerance, then eventually they become best friends.
Tolkien's detailed and often subtle prose delivered a certain spirit, that captured the magic in a sort of "innocent" beginning of the fantasy genre.
Jackson, alas, captured little of the spirit of the literature. He did manage to weave a mediocre action epic with the usual assortment of roller-coaster action sequences and wooden dialog. But he took an array of very interesting and deep characters and turned them into plastic action-figures with lame lines like "You have my bow!", "And MY axe!" and "Let's go kill some orcs!"
I was hoping to see something at least a little better than Dungeons and Dragons.
In the books, we get to travel to many wonderous and mysterious places, and we get to 'linger' and 'soak in' the surroundings and feel the magic.
In Jackson's world, it is like a road trip - stopping at alot of places and seeing alot of neat things and meeting alot of interesting people, but ultimately, by the time you get to your destination, you are exhausted too much to really care.
I would have taken an altered story and reduced character list if LOTR just captured the SPIRIT of the books. I think the only point where he came close to delivering that feeling was during the Bilbo birthday party sequence.
The Count of Monte Cristo accomplished where LOTR failed - they changed the story and shed some characters because they knew that it was impossible to get a 900 page book of its magnitude into a good movie. What resulted was an admirable, entertaining and ultimately satisfying "adaptation" of a very good book.
Jackson tried, but I think his "in your face" directing style got the better part of him.