Bring the Magic Back to Movies

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 2005)

Seeing "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" made me feel like a kid again, bringing me back to 1958 watching "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" with Ray Harryhausen's heroic special effects.
"LOTR" claims its rightful place as one of the founts of inspiration for "Star Wars," with its conflicted good guys up against a growing stronger evil -- that resonates in a post-9/11 world as it must have for Tolkien post-WWI and concurrent with WWII (and eerily like HBO's "Band of Brothers").
The cast of Brits, Americans and Antipodeans (including obscure favorites of mine from Brit TV and indie movies) team up amidst special effects that are thrilling yet comprehensibly old-fashioned.
In terms of comparing it to the book, I'm one of possibly two or three Baby Boomers who didn't read "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowship of the Ring" until this month (and will wait to complete the rest of the cycle in time for the following two movies), so I was both fresher to the material and less fanatical about it than some, including clarifications of some bits that I had misunderstood in the book.
I appreciated some of the telescoping of details (such as combining the elf princess Arwen, as played by Liv Tyler, with a legendary princess' love story) and missed others (by leaving out Tom Borondil and his mate the River's Daughter, the brightness of nature is left out, making for a darker movie than even the book). The endless exposition in the book is handled well, as both voice overs and through flash-back demonstrations. The final DVD will include deleted scenes.
Particularly well-handled is graphically showing the tempting danger of the Ring's evil power, on others and on Frodo -- a key difference in the mature themes of "LOTR" in comparison to "The Hobbit."
I was disappointed that the songs and mythic poetry were barely replaced by Enya's hardly noticeable background music.
(originally written 12/29/2001)