overwrought does not equal epic

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2003)

I just saw this movie and I must say that I have mixed reactions to it. While there were moments that I was on the edge of my seat, including powerful charge of the Rohirim (as chill inducing as it was is in the books) and the precarious hobbits dangling high above the Morgul Vale, for the most part I was quite annoyed by either the overwrought, drawn out facial expressions of the actors or the unnecessary changes to the plot. Unlike other die hard fans of the book, I did not miss the Scouring of the Shire scene, which I always felt was unecessary in the books, and certainly didn't need to be on the screen (which would have only added to the multiple endings, all of which, I might add, are in the books). Also, the change with the whole Gollum/Sam framing thing makes Frodo look stupid and Sam a blubbering baby, which the books definitely do not portray. Frodo keeps Gollum with them because he knows that Gollum knows the way better than they do and would never let Sauron get the ring. He shrewdly uses Gollums lust for the ring and desire to keep it for himself as well has his trust in Sam to protect him from Gollum. He also shares Gandalf's wisdom in being able to see Gollums fate woven into the fate of the ring, therefore woven with his as well. On top of this is his honest desire to attempt to reform Gollum and save him from his misery. This is a key point in the book and yet Jackson somehow managed to mangle it into some simplistic Gollum brainwashing trick. And yet I now understand these plot changes, because they start with Jackson saying "well, we can't have that scene what if this character did this instead?" and then all of a sudden you need to change some other bit, to make that change make sense, and then you need to change another bit ... etc until pretty soon the character's motivations are complelely different. Note to Jackson: don't mess with a masterpiece, Tolkien had a few thousand more IQ points and a whole lot more time to perfect his story, don't go astray because you think a particular shot would be "cool". Once you start unravelling such a intricate ball of yarn, it's hard to knit the thing all back together again (err, something like that, you get the idea).

Now having said that, the movie could have been much worse, which is something all the naysayers have to remember, a hollywoodised version of this movie would have been The Matrix or some such drivel. Luckily for Jackson though, he had such solid material to go on, and a litle skill, that it would have taken some serious incompetence to completely botch it. At times in the movie I am reminded that Jackson is a relatively inexperienced director, having directed mostly low budget B-movies (Dead Alive anyone?) and so I would give him an A for effort, but what would have happened if he would have teamed up with a more seasoned director to add some weight to many scenes which obviously lacked it (that final shot of Frodo waking up in the bed was downright painful). Please no more slow motion facial expressions, we get the idea, they're sad/angry/happy, you don't have to "light it up in neon" as one critic said. A fine effort, and it will gross billions, but far from the masterpiece people claim it to be.