Originally posted by Lara
No Mah, I'm not a goth, myself. some how I dont think I'd be able to walk the high street of my local shopping center and feel safe if you know what I mean.?
goth-people look cool
finti:
you just won't stop will you 😠 well, it's gonna come a couple of weeks later, it could've been here for the 19. of desember, but they decided to get harry potter early instead 😠
Here is a not so good LOTR reveiw from the Emporioum. Note how he says he'll wait for the other two movies that complete the trilogy before he judges it fully. I wish they'd done the same with that other well known trilogy. 🙄
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To be sure, Jackson (director of numerous cult flicks and one of my favorite films, Heavenly Creatures) goes out of his way to make The Fellowship a film for the Tolkien-obsessed. Throughout the production, he has collaborated in depth with the fan base, though I imagine there's only so much fan interaction one can take before going completely postal. And in fact, some fans are still unimpressed -- one fan Web site even tried to launch a petition to get the studio to change certain details about Liv Tyler's character, citing a long list of reasons. Imagine their surprise when they discover she only has about five minutes of screen time, anyway! (Also by way of totally random side note, the controversial theory that Sam is gay and is in love with Frodo gets considerable play in the film -- but you'll have to judge for yourself.)
Now it's been a decade and change since I last cracked open a Tolkien book, but from what I remember, Jackson has treated the source material with considerable faithfulness. Ironically, this may work against the film at the box office -- with all the genealogies and more races than you can count (and will the average moviegoer understand that hobbits and halflings are the same thing?), Peoria may not be willing to suffer through three hours of an elaborate fantasy world just to be given the message that, well, power corrupts.
Of course, The Lord of the Rings has been billed as an effects extravaganza, but overall, these are a considerable letdown after such a massive buildup. While the hobbitization effect -- which takes normal-sized actors and digitally shrinks them down to appropriate size -- is alarming at first, eventually you get used to it (though Astin's ringlets and chubby cheeks are just plain creepy).
Hobbits aside, it's the glaringly obvious digital/miniature/matte painted backdrops that start to wear you down. Our adventurers set out across countless picturesque vistas -- but when these are left untweaked, they look strikingly like boring old New Zealand (where the film was shot). To offset this, Jackson inserts outrageous monuments into the background to build a fantasy world. When he adds simple ruins or rocky outcroppings, it works fine, but when it's an entire phony city, it just isn't believable, and that pulls you out of the story. If I see another movie (Star Wars: Episode I and Gladiator also abused this to an extreme) where a few digital birds go flying across the digital sunset over the digital buildings again, I'll puke.
While the film is studded with action, the fights are not particularly well-choreographed, either. You don't get a good sense of scale of the big battles, and the in-close fighting is edited to frantically to follow well. (Thankfully, there are no Matrix-rip-off wire-flips or time-stopping tricks!) The exception to the rule is a fight between the gang and a giant troll, deep in the Mines of Moria. The troll is one of the best CGI monsters I've seen on film, and his battle sequence is put together perfectly.
This scattershot quality extends throughout the film. Another example: The magic effects are alternately stellar and disappointing. While Gandalf's showdown with the demon Balrog is arguably the film's high point, his skirmish with rival Saruman (Christopher Lee, bearing a staff with what I swear is a golf ball on top) is pretty lame -- two old geezers just pointing their staffs at one another, which sends the other one flying against the wall, over and over again. It's hard to believe the sequences are from the same movie.
Overall, I found the film enjoyable and don't want to harp too much on the negatives, though they are substantial. But with two-thirds of the story to go, it's difficult to judge the film on its own, so I'll be gentle this time out and give it a cautious recommendation. Suffice it to say that fantasy fans will enjoy The Fellowship of the Ring, [and judging from the volumes of Tolkien loyalists who have written in, they have already decided they LOVE it, unseen], but most moviegoers will find it overly long and just too exhausting. Jackson may have some tricks up his sleeve for the sequels, but it's going to be tough for him to improve things much with The Two Towers, when the plot slows down (in my opinion) and the highlight of the story includes an anthropomorphic tree. I understand that making a movie out of a legion of people's favorite book means the opportunity for a director's interpretation is limited, but Jackson also needs to understand that for his trilogy to earn the title of epic it will require something more than simple length.