Enough already

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2004)

I'm exhausted. This is one long, long, loooooong movie. The major siege--once more against an unpronounceable, impregnable fortress--is absolutely spectacular visually. The problem is that the movie drags on for another 45 minutes or more after that with at least 4 scenes that appear to be the conclusion only to be followed by yet another final scene.
Here's the problem: Clearly LOTR, unreadable as it was, has made an indelible impact on all epics that have followed. But because this definitive film version hasn't been released until now, the movie appears to be derivative of other films that are actually borrowing from this source. I understand that "Star Wars," for example, certainly echoes LOTR, but because it got there first, the stuff we're seeing here is familiar (a knighted British actor of some repute plays the Gandalf/Obi Wan role; the Gollum is as obnoxious as Yoda and speaks similarly; the oversized attack elephants are simply flesh and blood versions of the AT-ATs; the furry dwarf sidekick serves as comic relief akin to Chewbacca; the two secondary Hobbits parallel R2 and Threepio, etc. ).
So Peter Jackson has an insoluble problem: if he sticks to the books, which apparently he has from what I gather, much of what he shows us will echo things that have been influenced by this original source. However, they still seem overly familiar (e.g. how many times do we have to see characters "die" only to reappear later on?). And if he abandons the books, the fans of the books will object.
But then these movies are basically designed to appeal to the 14-year-old boy in all of us, and they do accomplish that. The critics seem enthralled by the films, but then most film critics were once 14-year-old boys, weren't they?