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February 2002 |
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Movie Review-Lord of the Ringsby The OTF COunseling Film GuildDate:2001 Director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema graced the silver screen with the first installment of Tolkien's acclaimed Lord of the Rings saga, Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001. Based on J. R. R. Tolkien's novel Lord of the Rings (LOTR), a six-part tome, the film promised adventure and magic embodied is a charming tale. Using cinematography and computer graphics and a tailored soundtrack, Peter Jackson crafts a film after Tolkien’s own heart. Delighting both Tolkien connoisseurs and first-time visitors to Middle-Earth, LOTR provides intense entertainment, drawing the viewer into the stories with beautiful cinema tricks and a fantastically talented cast. Despite the quality of the movie, Tolkien fans may balk at the liberties taken by the screenwriters; the movie is very different from the book, with collapsed characters, reordered events, and plain, blatant changing instigators of events. Though the film is loosely based on a book, some of the changes actually improve the viewer’s digestion of the long, detailed epic chronicling the actions of Frodo, son of Drogo, the unlikely Halfling hero of Middle-Earth. Previews. The bane of any moviegoer, and the first thing any viewer sees. Longer and longer the pre-movie commercials grow year by year. With advertisements from vehicles to, most recently, television programs, soon the movie experience will be polluted with ads during the movie. The extreme length of the previews, working in tandem with my large, and expensive, Coke and popcorn consumption, affected my enjoyment of the excessively long movie, leaving me pleading for the end, bladder straining. They should place a warning at the beginning of movies this long, or at least have an intermission to allow us weak-bladdered females a respite. My extreme need to urinate prevented me from enjoying the movie as well as I would have liked. Though I was swimming through most of the film, even the daftest viewer could not miss the enchanting cinematography. Vast, lush greenery, breathtaking reliefs, stark, foreboding mountains; these were the showcase of the film. Tolkien, whose works swarm with lavish detail of scenery and surroundings, would appreciate New Zealand’s beautiful land, so adequately captured on film. With the aid of computer graphics, LOTR soared, portraying visual tantalization at its peak. Quaint, medieval music, provided by Howard Shores, only strengthened this ancient, mystical portrait of Middle-Earth. Familiar faces such as Elijah Wood (Frodo) and Liv Tyler (Arwen) dotted the screen. However, they paled in ability and magic compared to the smaller names, such as Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Sean Bean (Boromir), and Hugo Weaving (Elrond), who stole the show, and portrayed acceptable matches for the characters in the novel. In my humble, educated-female point of view, the film and the characters of Frodo and Arwen would had been better recreated by other actors. Frankly, Wood was lackluster and amateur, making Frodo appear as a foolish, and unintelligent, teenager. Tyler should stick with films of the like of Armageddon and crude and twisted One Night at McCool’s. Despite these few casting transgressions, the casting and acting are superb. |
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What irks the Tolkien fan most, or those bent of book/film accuracy, is the screenwriter’s complete and utter disregard for the sanctity of the text version. The writers deliberately changed the nature of characters of Sam and Galadriel. Sam became more of a bumpkin buffoon and Galadriel an icy bitch, queen, neither of which do justice to Tolkien’s characters. The writers also cut and pasted characters together, or left them out entirely. Solely to further Liv Tyler’s acting career, they melded Arwen and Glorifindel, the elf that actually came to the aid of Frodo and company. Arwen is simply a princess in Tolkien’s work. In addition, the writers twisted events, often coming dangerously close to blasphemy against Tolkien’s novel. The Black Riders did not chase Frodo, Merry, and Pippin to the edge of the river. They did not have to jump for their lives onto the Ferry. Gandalf was supposed to meet Frodo in Brandybuck territory, in the Shire, not in Bree. Pippin did not disturb the monster outside the entrance to Moria; that was Boromir. I could continue to rant about the butchering of the story and the unseemly discrepancies, but I realize that these are almost minor faults in a damn good movie. However much havoc the writers wreaked, they did the viewer a tremendous service. Craftfully, the writers reordered events giving Tolkien’s previously long, unending monolith a more palatable feel, instead of straight chronological order, usually dotted only by annoyingly long flashbacks and explanations from characters as is found in the book.
Middle-Earth lives again in LOTR, with gorgeous backgrounds and graphics and capable actors. And though accuracy nuts like myself may writhe with dismay at changes to the classic tome, the writers managed to create a slightly different perspective on fantasy’s most famous story. Though I have to wait to see the second installment, The Two Towers, I wait anxiously to see if Peter Jackson can sustain the magic he has begun in Fellowship of the Ring.
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