competent, but not compelling

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2003)

This series seems competently made, but it lacks the drive that Tolkien displayed. Even if I look past the fact that a lot of the visuals seem to be based on the works of doodler Allan Lee, I cannot get past the vision of good and bad, which seems to be the same as in any other Hollywood movie, and so far removed from the conservative, cold-romantic view of the original author.
There's history. There's written history. Then there were a bunch of irreverent hobbits, who figured they could write the history from a hobbit's eye perspective. That (red) book got translated by an English professor.

I remember the doubts from Tolkien fans when they heard Peter Jackson was going to film LotR. At first, I shared those doubts, but then I realised that he was only following tradition. Of course, he would be making a romanticized, Hollywoodized version of the story. He would be making a fiction based on a true story, and he would be doing that true story injustice in the process. Taking that as a given, would the end result still be an enjoyable movie, all by itself? And I think that largely it is; but I don't see it as more than a competent re-telling of the subject matter. I liked Tolkien's more factual translation better. The LotR trilogy is hastily told, at times it feels like I am looking at abstracts of the book.