For New Year's Eve, I went to see Lord of the Rings. If you are a Tolkien fan, you have to see it: you will love this film. And if you don't know Tolkien, you may love it anyway.
At three hours, it's long, but then it's covering a 600-or-so page book and doing an excellent job of remaining faithful to the original. (I checked the book later and at least some of the dialogue is lifted wholesale from the novel.) Moreover, at three hours the movie flags only so slightly because of having so much to look at and some of the best epic fight sequences I've ever seen. (The qualifier "some of" is probably unnecessary in that last sentence.)
Some things I liked immensely:
The look. I think the big Tolkien artists were the brothers Hildebrandt, or something like that, and they are to Tolkien what Tenniel is to Alice in Wonderland. Anyway, the images are onscreen renditions of those characters. Elijah Wood is Frodo just as I expect most of the readers of the book always pictured him. (The only critter that was different AFAIC was the Balor--but it looked cool anyway.) And the scenery, both indoors and out, is just stunning. Very vertical and many shots showing how small the characters are--even the titanic figures--against the backdrop of the "world."
Not much comic relief. The film is unrelentingly filled with foreboding and dread. Pretty hard to achieve when you have elves and little hobbits running around. No Jarjar Binks here. I think British casts generally do a better job of this than Americans because somehow an English voice lets you believe in it all a little more than you might otherwise.
Powerful villains. Even the second-tier creatures/henchmen are able to knock the good guys about before being subdued.
Minimal romance. Liv Tyler may do more in the sequels, but even she fights as much or more than she kisses--which is maybe for 20 seconds of screen time.
The weaknesses are mostly weaknesses with the original material. The fact that it is the first of three parts is just a given, of course, otherwise (minor spoilers, especially if you've read the book): Gandalf's escape from Saruman, though explained slightly better in the book, was always sort of glossed over and in the film is almost why bother at all. It's as though villains just ought to expect the good guys to get away when making the perennial mistake of "taking prisoners."
I dislike the overuse of the Nazgul, especially having Liv Tyler's character rout the lot of them. They were more fearsome in the original, I thought, and one should have been enough to inspire fear in a pack of hobbits--so that later on when all nine show up, yikes!
Nevertheless, if you have any liking for the genre at all, this is a must-see. It is how the film ought to look and shows a genuine reverence for the material. And it's an enjoyable adventure for anyone who can tolerate a little make-believe.
