Technically, a great movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2003)

Well, what to say when you see a movie you´ve been imagining for 7 years... It is really hard to throw away prejudices and preconcepts. I think the result of this adaptation is more than acceptable, in fact, an excellent product. Great action, the love story, superb FX, nice and respectable stars, the drama, the commedy. It has all that it has to have. BUT then, as a LOTR fan, I feel very very dissappointed with some points. First of all, it makes me feel sad to see that THE ACTING, the best interpretation, the scene that better shows the spirit of theater and acting is the one of Gollum "struggling" with Sméagol. The best actor is computer created, without forgetting the surelly hard work (and very good one) of Andy Serkis. Now on to the characters. I was pissed off when I saw Aragorn giving the daggers to the hobbits and I understood that no Tom Bombadil will be in FOTR. I said, "OK, it´s a whole new character and lot of time for something that, truly, doesn´t affect so much the storyline". Something similar with Arwen and Glorfindel; but now, when Gollum decides to take Frodo and Sam to SheLob´s lair, it decides so because of Frodo "betrays" him. In the books, and I´ve already said that I´m a fan and cannot throw my concepts, Gollum takes the two hobbits to SheLob because of Sam, and this is one of the most important things in Sam´s character. Like Frodo hasn´t enough, Jackson took it off of Sam to give it to Frodo. HEY! SAM ALREADY EXISTS, YOU DON´T HAVE TO MAKE A NEW CHARACTER!!! This makes me sad too. But with Faramir, what Jackson did to Faramir makes me not sad but VERY P***ED OFF. This Faramir is totally opposed to the Faramir of the books. He was one of the noblest and wisest characters, even being very young, and there was a very big difference between Boromir and Faramir. I can´t see this difference in the movie. Man, Faramir resisted the temptation of the ring almost without effort, and here he don´t have the chance to get out of the shadow of his big brohter. In fact, it doesn´t even seems to bother him... It is a good movie, really well done, but for someone who have already created and recreated the characters, it will be a little difficult to accept some of these changes. Anyway, everyone should see it once or twice.