A visual masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (17 August 2002)

Don't get me wrong. I was never, ever, a fantasy freak, disdaining and looking with contempt upon those people who play Magic for days on end. I still haven't read a fantasy book voluntarily. But Lord of the Rings caught me by surprise. The trailers, you have to admit, looked amazingly cheesy and I was wary of spending three hours plus on a film that would bore me out of my mind. After hearing how wonderful it was I decided to look for myself.
The FOTR is the most visually stunning film I have yet seen, although it may be easily surpassed by its sequels. The amount of detail, combined with the sheer scope of the film, is mind-boggling. I think Peter Jackson succeeded in his aim: to make the film appear as it could have existed; believable though fantastical. After years of mediocre films, from Conan to Dungeons & Dragons, many people are saying that LOTR will break the barriers for fantasy like Star Wars did for sci-fi. This is unrealistic; I think LOTR is a one-off thing, and other fantasy films will pale in comparison to their big daddy. The level of immersion into Middle-Earth is incredible; you could imagine an alternate medieval Europe like this and LOTR as a documentary of it. I am sure that many superlatives have been expended on this film already, so I won't go further into that.
However, there are some things that I could relate to with a person that disliked the films. Firstly, the length of the film. After exiting Moria, the film just slows down to a crawl for the last hour, and even I was getting fidgety by the time the fellowship was going down the river. Secondly, the repetitiveness of some scenes. I swear, if there had been any more shots of the ring in someone's hand, or Frodo stumbling/looking confused/looking scared/looking constipated, I would have screamed. Thirdly, the cheese. Sometimes the film takes itself a bit TOO seriously for comfort (like when Legolas stands up in Rivendell and verbally attacks Boromir, using up one of his three lines of dialogue in the movie...). There are some other nitpicks, but those are the main points. I thought the acting was well-done for a fantasy film; kudos going to Sean Bean, though the Oscar nomination for McKellen was a bit too much.
All in all, a very good film, though for the reasons above I gave it an eight. I don't expect the sequels to disappoint me, because they were all made at the same time and will probably maintain the high standard, unlike many others in 2002!