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First Look DVD: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowshi

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Directed by Peter Jackson

 

Released by New Line Cinema

 

Starring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchet and Christopher Lee.

 

Rated PG-13, 178 min.

 

First let me say that I have not read any of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. So I write this review as someone who has only seen this movie and had no prior knowledge of anything about the world these characters inhabit before going in. My only taste of Middle-earth came from the animated version of “The Hobbit” (1978) and by the time The Fellowship of the Ring was released on Christmas day in 2001, the memories of that cartoon had long since faded. So I went into my local theater with an open mind, a happy heart and completely at the mercy of the blitz of media hype I had been hearing since mid-1999 about this possibly life-altering movie experience.

 

When I left the theater that day, I have to say I was a little disappointed. After nearly three hours I found myself just wanting the movie to end; it dragged on and on not really picking up the pace or intriguing me (except in a few spots) until the last half hour and then it suddenly and abruptly ended. I knew it was only the first installment of the trilogy but I felt a more concrete ending was needed. It seemed very open and vague to me. Fans of the book tell me all the time that the movie adaptation was very faithful to the source material and I know how obsessive fans can be about that sort of thing. So even if the ending of the book sucked, as long as the movie sticks to it all religious-like, then they’re a happy lot. Good for them. I say, let Hollywood take some liberties and change it for the better. I know most of you won’t agree with me there, but honestly, when I left the theater on Christmas Day, I know I wasn’t the only one looking around somewhat confused saying, “That’s the end? It’s over?”

 

Other than my issues with the ending and the three long hours that seemed like an actual lifetime (there are ways to make a 3-hour films interesting enough to seem relatively short), I thought it looked fantastic. If you’re the type who simply waits for movies to get home releases and never goes to the theaters you certainly missed out this time. This is a movie that NEEDS to be seen in a theater. Anything less than a theater screen will simply not do its majestic visuals justice. So if you didn’t cough up the dough to see this in theaters, kick yourself. And then walk outside and demand each passerby kick you as well. Cheapskate.

 

Fans of Tolkien’s books seem to be, for the most part, immensely satisfied with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It made more than $300 million domestically alone and it rekindled interest and sales of the novels. LOTR was nominated for 13 Oscars (the most that year) and took home 4, tying A Beautiful Mind for statuettes won that evening. Not bad for a movie that I originally upon first viewing felt was extremely overrated and a let-down.

 

All you D&D-types probably know the story all too well already and will be emailing me with umpteen corrections, but I’ll give it a stab for those of us who get to see the sun regularly and have known a woman’s touch:

 

The Movie:

 

The film begins with the forging of the Great Rings. Forged by whom? I have no idea. They don’t say. After these rings are forged, they are simply given away (by whom? Again, I don't know): three to the elves, seven to the dwarf lords and nine to Men. In these rings supposedly lies the strength and will for the bearers to govern their respective races. So what’d they do before they were blessed with these rings? Anyhow, some bad ass named Sauron over in Mordor decides out of the blue he wants a ring, too. So in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a ring, the One Ring and it contained all of his cruelty, malice and will to dominate all races. And that’s just what he did. He dominated and crushed everything in his path until the Humans and the Elves decided they wasn’t going out like that and stepped up in an attempt to give Sauron a good old fashioned chin check.

 

In a huge battle of some sort (there are so many huge battles in this trilogy from what I see in the trailers) the humans and elves are tussling with Sauron’s orcs something fierce. Just when it looks like the good guys may have the upper hand, Sauron himself pimps out and starts tossing fools this way and that. He’s so bad he wears the One Ring on the outside of his gauntlet as opposed to inside just to show the hell off. He ain’t really worried about nobody ganking him for it cuz by the looks of it, no one can even get within twenty feet of the guy. Except for the human Isildur, son of the king of Gondor. Isildur is checking on his dad, who just got knocked the F out by Sauron. Isi is a little peeved and picks up dad’s sword to take a swing at Sauron. Instead of simply raising his hand and sending Isi flying about seventy feet away like he’s done everyone else so far, Sauron opts to step on the sword, breaking it into tiny shards. Unfortunately, he underestimated the fercocity of a man backed into a corner. Left with nothing but a piece of sword, Isildur takes another wild and possibly last swing at Sauron. This one connects, cutting off Sauron’s hand and severing the One Ring from its master. And just like that, this supposedly bad mofo is defeated. By getting a friggin’ appendage chopped off. Great. Just great. The other 35,921 rings of power didn't even come into play.

 

From there, we follow the One Ring and its various owners. Isildur is killed and the ring is picked up by a creature called Gollum. After Gollum loses it, a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) picks it up. And that is where the movie starts proper, sixty years later in The Shire, home of Bilbo, his distant relative Frodo (Elijah Wood) and the rest of the hobbits. Bilbo is planning to leave the Shire and go off to finish a book he has been writing. It is Bilbo’s 111th birthday (the One Ring gives it owners long life) and the Shire is throwing a huge celebration for him. Even Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan) has dropped by to pay his respects. Gandalf knows that Bilbo is in possesion of one of the rings of power but until he sees Bilbo’s strange behavior in its presence up close and personal, he had no idea that it was the One Ring. He convinces Bilbo to leave it behind, to pass it on to Frodo. Bilbo reluctantly complies and takes off for Rivendell to be with the elves and finish his book of adventures.

 

Frodo is a bit upset that Bilbo has left, but Gandalf comforts him. He gives Frodo the ring and asks him to hide it, to keep it secret until he returns. Gandalf leaves the party to conduct some research. As Gandalf rides, he spies smoke rising from some mountains in the distance as well as thunder and lightning. Troulbe is stirring again in Mordor. Gandalf goes to some old building and begins reading dusty old tomes and drinking from an even dustier chalice. When he returns to the party at the Shire, he has a ton of news for young Frodo. The ring that Frodo is in possession of is the One Ring. He goes on to tell Frodo that Sauron was not defeated. He says that Sauron’s spirit endured, that his life force is bound to the ring; as long as the ring survives, so does Sauron. I don’t get that since Sauron made the ring, not the other way around, but anyway…

 

The ring has awoken and heard its masters call. Somehow and inexplicably, Sauron is back and he wants his damn world dominating jewelry back, too. I'm telling you Sauron is a black man under this armor, he covets this ring too much. I'm surprised he doens't have a One Jesus Pendant swinging from his neck. He’s already managed to double his army of orcs and rebuild his fortress without anyone having an inkling. Apparently, Gandalf had enough time away to do not only some heavy reading, but he also had time to search “everywhere” for Gollum as well. But the “enemy” got to Gollum first. They tortured him until Gollum gave up the info: a Baggins in the Shire has the ring now. How Gandalf knows all this I have no idea. How he managed to have the time to do any of it is an even bigger mystery since he made it back to the Shire before the celebration was barely over. Regardless, Sauron has released his Ringwraiths to track down the ring and since they now know where it is, Frodo is no longer safe. Gandalf sends Frodo away with nothing but the ring and his best friend, Sam, to keep him company. So Frodo is in possession of the one thing that can destroy the peoples of Middle-earth’s greatest enemy and Gandalf doesn’t even have the time or power to escort him? Hmmm.

 

Turns out Gandalf has more pressing matters. He must see the head of his Order in Isengard, a sort of Grand Wizard, if you will. (not of the KKK but he does wear all white…hmmm? Speaking of the KKK, why are there no black people in Middle-earth? OMG RAYCISM~!) The man Gandalf abandons Frodo for to seek advice is Saruman the Wise (Christopher Lee) and even though he’s dressed in white, he just looks like a villian. Saruman lays some bad news on Gandalf: Sauron can’t yet take a physical form but he’s still just as bad as he was 3,000 years ago. And to top it all off, he can see EVERYTHING. So my question is, if he can see everything, then why capture Gollum and torture him about the whereabouts of the One Ring? Shouldn’t he just be able to SEE where it is? Saruman tells Gandalf that the situation is basically hopeless. We can’t beat him, so we have to join him. Gandalf ain’t exactly with that plan or line of reasoning so Christopher Lee has to whup up on him like he did to Obi Wan and Anakin in Episode II. He manages to carry him to a decent ** affair despite it being clipped and somewhat on the short side.

 

Okay, okay okay…I’m getting a bit too in depth here. I don’t wanna spoil the whole flick for anyone. I’m just in love with the first 30 minutes or so of the movie. In a nutshell, Frodo has to take the One Ring straight into the depths of the barren wasteland known as Mordor and cast it into the fires of Mount Doom to destroy it. According to the elf Elrond, that is where it was made and it is the only place that it can be unmade. It’s not going to be an easy task however. Mordor is a land of fire, ash and dust and the very air surrounding it is poisonous fumes. It is the place where evil never sleeps and the very home of Sauron himself.

 

My question is, if Sauron made that ring, what’s to prevent him from making another should Frodo succeed in destroying it? Maybe I’m thinking too hard.

 

Frodo will, however, have help in his journey. The Fellowship that will be accompanying him consists of Gandalf the wizard, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), heir of Isildur, the punk who cut the ring off of Sauron in the first place, Legolas (Oliver Queen, I mean, Bloom. My bad), an elf archer, Gimli (John Rys-Davies), a dwarf, Boromir (Sean Bean), a stuck-up, prick type who’s there to cause that Real World-like tension and Frodo’s three friends, Merry, Sam and Pip. If that’s not an eclectic gaggle of co-conspirators I don’t know what is. It’s like watching a real-life Choose Your Own Adventure book.

 

The DVD:

 

LOTR is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer on the widescreen edition and Dolby Digital EX audio. One thing I’d have to say if you’re gonna buy this puppy is to avoid the full frame, pan & scan version. This is the one movie to own in widescreen even if you own nothing else in that format. Jackson’s visuals were shot and intended to use every inch of the screen and you’re only cheating yourself if you purchase a version that cuts any of that picture out. Get the widescreen version and see everything the director intended.

 

The second disc of this set contains the Special Features and supplements. For only a two-disc set (with a 4-disc director’s cut planned for a November 12th release) this set packs a lot of extras. It includes three behind-the-scenes featurettes:

-"Welcome to Middle-earth"

-"The Quest for the Ring" (30-minute special shown on FOX).

-"A Passage to Middle-earth" (60-minute special shown on SCI-FI).

-15 featurettes from www.lordoftherings.net

-A 10-minute behind-the-scenes preview of The Two Towers.

-Enya's "May It Be" music video.

-A preview of the Special Extended DVD Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring due out on November 12, 2002. This is awesome because it has 30 minutes of additional footage re-cut back into the movie. The preview shows quite a bit of what to expect and certainly whets your appetite for that ‘director’s cut” of the movie.

-A preview of EA’s “The Two Towers” video game.

-2 Teaser Trailes and the Final Theatrical trailer

-6 TV spots

 

IMO:

 

Frodo’s quest to get the ring to Mordor is something straight out of a TSR campaign. There are numerous horrible creatures and hordes of ugly monsters (like those Ringwraiths...they rule!) that get in the way of the fellowship’s goal. There are mystical and magical artifacts to be picked up and when facing the odds that they are, there are also going to be losses. Frodo can’t even trust his companions at times because it seems that anyone who is even near the One Ring is consumed by a sudden lust to own it. Aragorn, the strider, is fighting some personal demons, including what he thinks is an inner weakness and his love for an elf, Arwen (Liv Tyler). It’s a very complex piece of work with plenty of visual spectacles and bloody battles for you to enjoy on top of the character development that’s usually non-existent in movies like this.

 

I’d be lying, though if I didn’t mention that this film loses something on the small screen. The massive sets, sprawling landscapes and sweeping camera motions just don’t feel or look the same on the small screen. Although this movie was filmed in New Zealand, you have to sometimes look twice and convince yourself you’re not looking at a far off undiscovered planet. When you look at a statue or landscape and you have to wonder whether it is real or CGI then the production people have done their job.

 

The Shire is so bright onscreen that it can light your home up enough for you to believe that it is daylight outside even when it is night. Rivendell, home of the elves, looks like an oil painting; light, soft, airy and ethereal. All of the other scenes seem as though they jumped straight from the brush of Frank Frazetta. LOTR is simply gorgeous to look at, regardless of the setting and there are numerous stupendous settings to marvel at.

 

I initially didn’t see the big deal about LOTR when I saw it in the theater, but one thing that seeing it at home gives you the opportunity to do is really pay attention. There were certain plot points, mysteries and details that I missed on my first viewing that got cleared up for me once I was able to focus all of my attention at home.

 

Final Thoughts:

 

Admittedly I was sour on LOTR at first, but viewing it at home has changed my mind. I still don’t agree it deserves all of the high praise it received but it is still a superior piece of movie making. For fans of the fantasy genre it is somewhat of a godsend. For fans of Tolkien, it’s a mixed bag. It can be praised for following the books nearly to the letter but sometimes this can be considered a flaw if the source is thought to be flawed. But if you are a fan of said flawed material, it's all good.

 

Most people bag on Christophe Gans' movie Crying Freeman. I thought it was great simply because it followed the anime nearly frame for frame, even though the anime wasn't anything super special. Speaking of Gans, his feature Brotherhood of the Wolf was released shortly after LOTR and was notoriously slept on by the masses. I don't know if it was because it was a French film or if it was perceived to be trying to capatilize or piggy back on the success of LOTR and the fantasy genre, but in my opinion it is a movie well-worth your time and it should've been a lot bigger and did alot better than it did. (Just to clarify, Le Pacte Des Loups, as it is known in France, hit screens in France before LOTR came out here in the US, so it wasn't some rush job to make some quick fantasy geek money after observing LOTR's successes) Gans has a similar style and directorial eye as Peter Jackson but "Brotherhood" is much more intriguing throughout, in my opinion, and wraps up in one installment rather than being the first part of a series. it's a very strange blend of sci-fi, fantasy, folklore and martial arts that WILL leave you wanting more. It's just...different. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the the French. But back to Peter Jackson and LOTR...

 

Jackson didn’t have enough time even in nearly 3 hours to cover everything in the books but he did his best. Someone out there is always gonna have something negative to say about that. I read one review where a guy suggested an 18-hour series consisting of six 3-hour movies as opposed to the three 3-hour flicks Jackson has filmed. “Because a fuller, richer adaption is needed to do the novel complete justice.” Heh. Whatever. I think he did a good job with the constraints he had. It was certainly ambitious and revolutionary in so many ways. To film all three movies back-to-back and get the funding for them all; to get a studio to believe that these three huge epics would be profitable takes some big ‘ol brass balls. So you gotta give Jackson credit for that at least.

 

And to be honest, I think he did it not for himself but for the fans of these books. As a director, every time I see him, he comes off as someone who truly cares about “getting it right”. He wants to be as faithful as possible, to do right by the source material and give the fans something to be proud of. He wants you acne-ridden social misfits to be able to go out at least once a year. Twice, depending on how much money your parents are willing to give you and if you can manage to arrange reliable transportation.

 

So don’t hate. Buy it. And go see The Two Towers this December. At least Jackson isn’t making you wait 3 years and then disappointing you on your one big night out, right?

 

O. R. Polk, Jr.

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