A technical master piece that falls short in other areas.

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2003)

It is hard to make a fair review based on the shortened version of the movie but I will give it a try.
First of all I want to praise the team behind the CGI and especially that of Gollum which is nothing short of perfect. The sound FX crew, costume designers, smiths, makeup artists, sculptors etc are all worthy of praise as well.
Unfortunately, all is not well in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth. Many important characters are ill adapted, ill casted and perverted.
Take Aragorn for instance, who in the book is a tall, proud and weather bitten man with many hard years of life carved into his body and features; a descendant of kings with great claims to make. In the movies he is of average height, narrow of shoulders and weak of limb, judging from how he moves. His face does not carry the slightest trait of a hard life and his manners are soft and his voice is weak.
Take Gimli who in the book is a great dwarven warrior with a passion for hollow halls of stone. In the movies he is perverted into a comic relief character who moves nearly as poorly as a "real" dwarf.
Take the Ringwraiths who in the book are imposing figures with dark powers that make their enemies shake with fear. In the movies they are a bunch of sissies who get their asses whooped time and again while actively seeking physical confrontations.
Take the elves, who ought to be timeless and beautiful beyond words. In the movies they look ordinary and nearly ugly at times.
Take the Orcs who ought to be fearful and cruel warriors with their own cultures, languages and conflicts. In the movies, they are killed as easily as bugs and they move as if they were 100 years old and moreover they do not show off any soul or will of their own.
I could go on and on forever with a list of such poor adaptations but will end it here. The point is that fantasy is very much about the individuals who inhabit the world and how some are of greater power and stature than others. This is something which Peter Jackson has not managed to bring to the screen visually at all.
What he on the other hand has brought to the screen visually is Sauron himself: the greatest power and fear of Tolkien's Middle Earth compressed into first a mail clad warrior and then a burning vagina revolving on top of Barad Dür like a search light. Whether to laugh or cry at this adaptation is up to the viewer. It is pretty much the abc of horror that what you can imagine is a lot more scary than what you can actually see. And this brings us to my next point, the aurals:
It can never be stated too many times how important the aurals are for bringing a world to life and drawing the viewer into it. While the sound effects are very well crafted in Peter Jackson's LOTR, the music is not. In fact, the music is so poorly fitting that it spoils the entire experience. It is too ethereal and carries no dynamics or inspiring rythms and where it tries to do so it is more of a turn off than whatever crap the standard radio station is playing. It is altogether pretentious and the only feeling it successfully conveys is melancholy.
Another thing that strikes me is how empty the world is. No wild life, no natural beauty but bare mountains, no hamlets or buildings outside of the cities, no roads, hardly any traits of the civilizations of old and no agricultural signs at all except in the Shire. A few cities and the rest is wasteland.
The movies can be summarized as technical master pieces but ill adapted, ill casted and musically disastrous.