incredible production but a poor adaptation

Rating: 5/10 (31 December 2003)

A lot of people have called this a masterpiece, and I guess so many people can't be wrong. However, this movie just did not work for me at all.
When I look at the stills in the promotional books I see an incredible movie. The artwork and passion of the production crew is amazing. But unfortunately we got few opportunities to dwell on these efforts. In far too many scenes the camera was constantly moving in grand cinematic flourishes, with the effect that many of the scenes were often blurred and shaky. Worse, in the battle scenes the "shake and bash" camera style was used excessively. There was so much artistry in the sets and costumes, but it was spoiled by the constant camera motion and often ugly post-production. I also found the score to be incredibly intrusive, melancholy, and boring.
I thought the screenplay was very clumsy, with a lot of the added dialogue feeling inferior to the original. I was particularly turned off by Jackson's attempts to increase the excitement of every scene, to the point that was going on no longer had any credibility. If the bad guys are obviously unbeatable, then there's no sense of jeopardy any more. It all starts to feel phony and unbelievable. Jackson added a lot of scenes that were just excuses to show fights or special effects. These obviously increased the excitement for many, but not for me. Although I loved some of the deviations in the first movies, this time around the plot changes felt emotionally manipulative or like excuses for more special effects.
People are calling this a masterpiece, but really it's just a great original story dressed up with a lot of special effects and dumb fight scenes. Which is sad, because with the obvious passion and talent that went into these movies, they could easily have been great.