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| A- A- A- | |
| Review by Xibo | Date seen: December 26, 2001 |
| Viewing Location: Newport | Grade: A- |
| Summary: Amazing to watch, but not much depth | |
| So you get your money's worth here... three long hours of beautiful countryside, mountains, forests, elves, hobbits, large battles, melees, too many ugly orcs and other beasties, the Balrog, and couple of incredibly huge castles. Also an amazing wizard's tower. The battle between the wizards was not very impressive though, it seems like although Gandalf is supposed to be a powerful wizard, he never did any really impressive magic.
The storyline had no depth, and I couldn't see the depth of characters nor the symbolism that was strong in the book. Mostly, you get a lot of backstory and a lot of celebrating hobbits, and some nasty battles and travels. It's certainly an excellent picture, if a little flawed. | |
| A+ A+ A+ | |
| Review by Finrod | Date seen: December 19, 2001 |
| Viewing Location: Atlanta | Grade: A+ |
| Summary: A worthy film | |
| I wasn't so sure about this movie when I saw it the first time (I've forgotten more about Tolkien than most people know), but the more I saw it the more I liked it. If you like this movie you should definitely buy/see the extended version, which at 3.5 hours isn't really significantly longer than the 3 hour theatrical version, but adds in a lot more detail, and fills out a lot of things that then get referred to in later movies, and generally flows better overall. Granted the film still jumps 60 pages in the book going from Buckleberry Ferry straight to Bree, but there was no way they could have made a film of the entire book without it running 12 hours or so. They actually also covered the first chapter of The Two Towers, but that was fairly necessary in order to make a good ending. | |
| A- A- A- | |
| Review by Jigen | Date seen: December 28, 2001 |
| Viewing Location: Bellingham - Bellis Fair | Grade: A- |
| Summary: A great film, but some flaws here and there | |
| You've read the book right? Well.. you can pretty much forget what you read. The creators do a good job at keeping the major points in order, but we lose some of the details along the way. Really, this doesn't hurt as much as I would have thought. We get a solid introduction to the trilogy and a few action scenes along the way to keep things moving. Tremendous cinematic backdrops stick out as one of the strengths of the film as well as solid performances all the way around. There are some editing cuts that get abrupt and one scene toward the end that seems to almost be filler, but it doesn't take away badly from the overall strength of the film. Plus, we get 2 more of these over the next 2 years. | |
"I should put quotes here."