Review: Lord of the Rings

Is it any good? Yes.
Did it blow me away? No.
The reason is there isn't anything in it that I haven't seen before. There were no moments in it where I just thought "Wow!".

This review is from someone who has never read the books and only just vaguley remembers the 80's cartoon.

PLOT = It could have been brilliant but wasn't. It reminded me of Saving Private Ryan. 9 heroes walking through a dangerous land and on a perilous mission. But the plot has big problems. The main one is we know exactly what the mission is from the very start of the film. In SPR we knew that the had to find Private Ryan. But who is he? Where is he? Is he still alive? That's what kept that story going but in LOTR there isn't any of that. We know their mission at the start and it doesn't change. So it just seems to move from one set piece to another. They meet bad guys, they escape, they meet more bad guys, they escape. It just becomes repetative.

And we're never really told anything about these guys. What is there motivation for going on this journey? Some of them seem to be there for no reason. I would have loved some scenes where the characters actually sat down and thought about what they are doing and if they should do it. It would have been great to have some scenes where they talk about their homes and the lives they have. I can't remember any of that and I don't think I knew anything more about them by the end than I did at the start. I don't want to start going on about Star Wars because the films shouldn't be compared but even in TPM, which was slated for it's character development, you still know why the characters are doing what they do.
There is just 3 hours of the Fellowship running from bad guys without any real explanation as to why. Plus, when some of them get beat up, they are fine in the next scene. If someone gets cut then you should see them struggling for the rest of the film.
There IS areal sense of danger at the beginning and some of it is quite scary. But by the end it's gone. Mainly because you've just seen 2 hours of them managing to escape over and over again and you end up knowing that these Orcs and RingWraiths might not be that scary afterall.
I don't know whether the book is like this but I got quite bored after a while.

CAST = Some of the cast suprised me by being good. Others I didn't like. Ian McKellan was great. He is that part. Just like Alec Guiness in ANH he just seems to be that character. He's the only one in the film who doesn't seem to be acting. Liv Tyler is terrible. She shouldn't be there. Cate Blanchette seems embarassed and Hugo Weaving just looks weird.
But the one I really didn't like was Elijah Wood. His "little boy lost" look is fine at the start because that's what he is. But he's still the exact same at the end and it's just annoying. You would have thought that the character might have changed a bit by the end of the film but I don't think he did. He just looked and acted the same.
And the cast don't seem to be having any fun. If they are then it's not coming through on screen. Apart from McKellen who is obviously loving it.
Gandalf was the only character I liked. I haven't read the book so I don't know if the actors play the characters well but none of them interested me. I didn't feel sorry for any of them. Even when Gandalf died and they were crying. I didn't care.

CGI = Everyone is going on about the CGI being better than ILM. It isn't. It's just different. Most of the CGI in this is very dark which makes it more real. But is that what you want? I don't. I want CGI to blow me away by making things that would be impossible to create any other way. And they haven't got rid of the CGI "blur" that ILM managed to do in TPM. They do some things better than ILM but other things they didn't get right.

DIRECTION = I think if you're a LOTR fan then you'll be glad Peter Jackson directed it because it is well directed. But he can't direct action! Someone said that to me and I never knew what they meant but I do now. Think TPM. When you saw the Gungans moving into battle you thought "This is going to be amazing". When the droids marched straight at them it was. But as soon as Lucas zoomed in to focus on Jar Jar or some other Gungans you lost all sense of scale. It's the same here. The fight scenes are confusing and so close up that you lose sense of scale and just how many people are in the room. The room could be swarming with battles but you wouldn't know. But other than that he directed it well and seemed to put a lot of effort into it.

I saw this film with 5 massive LOTR fans and two of them loved it. Two like me thought it was good but nothing special and the other one said "It's good but it's not Lord Of The Rings".

I don't know what has got the critics so hyped because like I said, there was nothing in it that I hadn't seen before. Raiders Of The Lost Ark is a far better adventure film. There aren't any other real fantasy films to compare it to. Maybe that's why it being so praised.

If you like the books then you'll probably think it's amazing. But if LOTR is to beat Titanic and become one of the most popular films ever then it will have to appeal to non-fans like me. If I had to mark it out of 10 and give it about a 7.

the thing that comes to my mind when I read your review, and what you think is bad, is that this is just like the book, and that it seems very positive to me.

''some of them seem to be there for no reason''

other than saving the world?

'' There is just 3 hours of the Fellowship running from bad guys without any real explanation as to why.''

the explanatation is, as I positively know is in the film, that they must destroy the ring to save the world.

If someone came to you tommorow and said "look Mah, I have this ring. You have to walk through hell with it so it can be destroyed or the world will be destroyed. And you might not come back". Would you just say "okay" and accept that this is your job? Of course you wouldn't. And that's the feeling I got from the film.

It was like Frodo just decided that he would do it and his freinds decided to come along for the sake of it. Why did they go? To help there freind? If it is then it was unrealistic.

If your freind came to you tommorow and said "I have to deliver this thing to Afghanistan. Fancy coming with me". You'd never go.

I just didn't like the way they seemed to take it in their stride. It diminished the evilness of the bad guys. There was NO motivation for a lot of the Fellowship to go.

This comes from another review but it sums it up - "Ring bad. Must be destroyed. Hey I'll go!" That's the impression I got. And it summed up the plot.

Is this what the book is like? I can't beleive it is. It seemed to me that Peter Jackson was so desperate to get the Fellowship on the road and in danger so he could show off the effects that they skipped a lot of detail. Or is the book like that?

I wanted to know a lot more about the characters and where they come from.

in the book frodo is scared first, gandalf says how important it is, and that he has to do it, he is the 'chosen'. then he goes, sam wants to follow and does, the two other hobbits wants to follow their best friends whatever happens and so they do, the other 5 members are highly qualified and professional persons and are picked to join the saving of the world in the meeting between all the wise and respected people. they are professional 'soldiers' you might say and it's not so strange to have a special elite group involved in dangerous stuff.

That is pretty much what happens and I agree with the part about Strider and the rest of them. But to me it just seemed too rushed and too easy for Frodo and the Hobbits to say "yes I'll save the world".

They should have spent more time developing this. I might have liked the characters better if they had.

The ring can only be carried by Frodo,he is chosen by it, that is why he does it. sam cares extraordinarily much for his 'master'. the others: a bit more strange for them to follow, but as read later in the book, they didn't know how scary and horrible it would be, and they regret joining.

I didn't get that from the film. Apart from the Frodo part.

I'll probably see it again so I might like it better next time when I have a better idea of who everyone is.

Hmm,. Well, I;m not seeing it to tomorrow night, but if the film really did fail to make some of these things clear, it is an error.

In the book: Frodo came because a. he is the Hero, and it is their lot to do dangerous things, and b. because the Elves and Gandalf told him how important it was, and that he was the only one who could do it. That didn't leave him much choice; the respect those people commanded was enormous

Sam comes for roughly the same reason JJ does in TPM, Merry and Pippin are both the adventerous sort and are knackered if their friend is going to have fun and not them- it must be said, they regret their decision to come later.

As for the rest of the Fellowship, they are ALL doing it because this mission is essential to saving the world! Sauron's victory would make the Elves positiion untenable and he is on the verge of conquering both the Dwarves and Gondor. These people HAVE to act or their people are screwed. And each of them is pretty much the chosen champion of their kingdoms.

my.....god, thats a long review.

Right! 90 minutes to go before I start to watch it, so in about five hours I'll come back here and give my opinions...

ah, i can feel the excitement I'm gonna feel right before I see it.

I went and saw the movie yesterday. It was quite good. the only real problem is that the subtitles are so low on the screen that when they speak "elvish," everybody craned their necks to see. Then you couldn't see. That annoyed me, but I could make out what they were saying.

The movie didn't seem too long. I have read "The Hobbit," but I haven't read the trilogy yet. I liked the movie enough that I think I will read them now. Another annoying thing was the close-up battle shots. They irk me, and I really hope they aren't used in AOTC. Other than that, great movie.

Ok, I am all done, and ... wooooooowwwww...

Well, I liked it anyway.

As a big fan of the books, as far as I am concerned the biggest problem with them having changed small bits isn't that they chnaged them per se (because the changes were pretty sensible for a film adaptation), but more that every time one happened I found myself thinking about it and missed a bit... for example:

"I don't remember Aragorn talking to Frodo before he left at the end. Hang on, he DIDN'T talk to him. I wonder why they changed that? Oh bugger, now I've missed what he said..."

Meanwhile, I thought the acting was superb- even from those who some people have criticised- and I have to say that I do not quite understand KJ's criticisms of their motivations. It all seemed clear cut to me, even if I hadn't read the books (I talked to some 'LOTR virgins' about if afterwards. Everyone KNOWS what the Ring is; having been identified as such there is no reason to question the motivations of those who went on the quest. Seemed very clear cut to me.

As for the effects... well...

There were no SW duels, per se, so we are yet to see if they can come up trumps there. Aragorn has a good but brief fight with an Urak-Hai at the end and Gandalf and Saruman have an odd (but strangely engaging) force-push fight, but nothing really on the scale of the TPM sabre duels.

In every other area, though, the film tops Star Wars. The fight with the cave troll in Moria is absolutely amazing, and is something that SW could learn from... unless it already has in AOTC, of course.

The Orcs died a LITTLE too easily to be seen as quite the threats they were meant to be, but the general fighting scenes are fantastic. Personally, I like the fast brief cuts. It made the whole thing seem very chaotic and more intense. And there was a good feeling of 'contact'- rather like Braveheart but with less blood.

The shots of various locales like Rivendell, Lorien and Isengard were higgly impressive with their swoops and so on- just showing how technology has advanced lately. Perhaps they used the SAME swoop trick at Isengard too many times, but it was great anyway.

And I must say, Sean Bean's blaze of glory at the end was most impressive... in fact, Sean Bean came across as quite my favourite, I feel. His was the only hero that was not a 'goody two shoes'; he had mxed motives and a confused mind and was all the better for it.

So, I loved it. As for thw question of how it would strike non-LOTR fans... hmm.

I think it was little things. For example, I assume it is Minas Tirith that Gandalf visits near the start of the film to check about Isildur's ring, but we are never told as much. It is also not immedaitely apparent quite how much time passes between Gandalf leaving the Shire at the start and him coming back. As a book fan, I know it was years, but from the film it could easily have been weeks, and not until you see that Bilbo has finished his book are you given an indication of passed time.

For another example, Galadriel talks readily about the burden of being a 'Ringbearer', but it is never made obvious that she knows this because she HAS one. Unless you remember her being one of the three Elves given rings at the very start, which is unlikely. And if you hadn't read the books you might also ask why Galadriel, if she has a ring, hasn't been corrupted like the Nazguls (the answer, BTW, is simply that the Elves could not be corrupted). She also doesn't quite finish explaining what she meant by calling Frodo her 'doom'- because if Frodo destroys the One Ring, her own ring will stop working and the power of the Golden Wood will be broken. And if Frodo fails, Sauron kills them all anyway. So no matter what happens, Galadriel's time is nearly done. It is meant to be rather tragic, and whoile I wouldn't have objected to it being cut, it seemd to be half-in, half-out, which is odd.

So not 100% clear to a non-book reading audience- but not enough to actually detract from the quality of the film.

In short, better than TPM, and if AOTC is this good then we have FINE times ahead...

i just saw this movie and i thought it was really really good, the only flaw was that their wastn really an ending with any sence of closure to it, it felt very abrupt. but thats forgivable since its a trilogy. but the make up and battle scenes are some of the most amazing ive ever seen. plus the acting is very good for the most part

9-10

It was great, very very good, and KJ here we go with your compareing crap yet again . saving private ryan 🙄 right. 🙄

and KJ here we go with your compareing crap yet again . saving private ryan right.

lord of the rings is a far better film then saving private ryan and all its cliched glory.

lord of the rings is a great movie i loved it ive seen it three times

Damn, fellas. Better than "Saving Private Ryan". That is a BOLD statement. I think you all built it up too much. I'll let you know it if is any good when I see it tomorrow.

hahhahaahahah private ryan that is a joke of a movie dont compare those two movies to each other they are nothing alike and one is a medicure film (private ryan) and the other a beautifully made film (lord of the rings )