FINALLY Movies worthy of Tolkien's Storytelling

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2003)

It's so great to FINALLY have a good filming of these stories. Anyone who enjoyed these books will love the movies. Peter Jackson did a wonderful job with keeping them fairly true to the books and making every single scene attention capturing and so enjoyable. True, the Aragorn-Arwen love story was a bit -um- embellished, but other than that, Jackson took Tolkien's stories and managed to convert his gift of words into action on the big screen. The location is more than breath-takingly amazing! New Zealand was the perfect place to shoot, so ALL of Middle Earth is absolutely outstanding, beautiful, and awesome.
I must admit, Elijah Wood did surprise me. He was a cute talented little boy, but I had no idea that he could be capable of carrying such a role of Frodo Baggins and managing to show his slow deterrioration throughout their journey. He did do very well. Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan also are so good at bringing a little bit of humour to the movie. After the movie, you already feel so tired. It's an exhausting movie, but they do an excellent job at making things a little lighter throughout the heavy mood setting. It's obvious that these two were good friends off the set as well as on. Orlando Bloom...it's so amazing that this is his first real movie to be in. He really did an amazing job. It's obvious that he really knew about his character and analyzed him thoroughly. Strange that nobody had heard of him before this. It's great that he invented surfing, though...those elves really are amazing. Now, he's a great actor and did a wonderful job, but it seemed like his main job was to do the cool stunts, look handsome, sense things, and state the obvious. Of course, Ian McKellan was wonderful. He amazes me. The way he completely captured Gandalf and paid so much atention to the little things that no one would notice if they weren't there, but the fact that they are just astounds everyone. Viggo Mortensen also was really good. He was a perfect Aragron/Strider. He had the rough, unshaven, warrior side, but the wise, sleek, gentle side, too. He's good looking and was very noble when it came to his heritage and being king.
Well, everyone was wonderful and, of course, the movie is exciting and a great story. It's so obvious that they had so much chemistry. The greatest actors can come in a make a movie like that and it can be good, but if they don't have the chemistry that this cast obviously had, it wouldn't be great. This movie is great.