Extremely Overrated

Rating: 4/10 (19 September 2008)

Good art direction and visual style prevent me from giving this a lower rating. By the way, this opinion applies to all of the Lord of the Rings movies, not just this one.
TLofR is a hugely overrated trilogy, with a hugely overrated director. I like the books, but I'm not such a fan that I will hate anything that is different from the source. These not only drop the poetic and beautiful style of the books, these movies wrench them into by-the-books action movies, with overly dramatic acting and dialogue that is common in most modern historical epics.
Legolas is transformed into a typical sci-fi/superhero character who does flips and slides down stuff while managing ridiculous feats that just embarrass me. He's also played by the king of pretty-boys, the great Orlando Bloom. Meanwhile, Aragorn, who is probably the best of the main characters, is still very much the wise, down-to-earth, gritty hero a la Obi-wan- Kenobi or John McClaine. Gimli, in true Hollywood fashion, becomes a sidekick. He's the short fat guy who makes little self-deprecating comments that rarely are funny and actually seem to insult the audience.
This, like the other grossly overrated movie, Titanic, is a movie that plays off people's stupidity. It uses the cheapest way possible to get wide popularity, mainly with the most stereotypical, overused trash that makes up the components of your typical crowd-pleaser. It just makes it worse when people consider this "amazing", "original", "unheard-of", "unpresidented", etc. Hello! Get a life, this is your typical action flick that has one goal: to be popular without any real originality or creativity. That said, whoever did the production design on this did a good job, and that's pretty much the only award this film deserves, even with the flashy CG that seems too animated to work for such drama. I know people in the Academy can see this too, but why did they vote for this. Next time, give 11 Academy Awards to something that truly deserves it.