The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - Extended Edition
The Cast
Sean Astin ... Sam Gamgee
Sean Bean ... Boromir
Cate Blanchett ... Galadriel
Orlando Bloom ... Legolas Greenleaf
Billy Boyd ... Peregrin 'Pippin' Took
Ian Holm ... Bilbo Baggins
Christopher Lee ... Saruman
Ian McKellen ... Gandalf the Grey
Dominic Monaghan ... Merry
Viggo Mortensen ... Aragorn
John Rhys-Davies ... Gimli
Andy Serkis ... Gollum
Liv Tyler ... Arwen
Hugo Weaving ... Elrond
Elijah Wood ... Frodo Baggins
I've been wanting to watch the LOTR trilogy again for sometime now, but I wanted to make sure that I had the time to devote to it and be in the right frame of mind. When I sat down to watch Fellowship yesterday, I was all prepared to be underwhelmed and ready to write a snarky movie review about how the movie doesn't age well, it's not for everyone and so on. Basically just rip it to shreds for destroying the images I had in my head from reading the books over and over again. Curiously enough, that didn't happen. For clarification's sake, I watched the Extended DVD version which I will always consider to be the real version as a fan of the books. This designation does have an effect on the overall rating, which is why I'm making it clear.
Based off of J.R.R. Tolkien's much-beloved book The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship is the first of three movies that were adapted for the big screen by screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson. It was a monumental and brave task, adapting this series of epic books to the silver screen, not just because of the enormity of the exercise, but because any changes in minutia would most certainly come under harsh scrunity from the legions of Tolkien fans. Having said that, Peter Jackson must have enormous balls to willingly undertake directing this series of movies.
I'm going under the assumption that everyone knows what exactly the movies are about, so I'm not going to go into too much backstory here. As basic as I can tell it: long ago evil bad guy Sauron made One Ring that is basically the ultimate weapon, lost the ring in a battle, and 3000 years later the ring has reawakened and is calling out to its evil minions to bring it back to Sauron. The only way to destroy the ring is to throw it into the Cracks of Doom, which is right around where Sauron resides. The ring is in the possession of a hobbit named Frodo (Wood), having been given it by his close relative Bilbo (Holm), and now Frodo has to destroy the ring before Sauron can get his claws in it again. He is aided on this mission by fellow hobbits, humans, elves, dwarves and a wize old wizard named Gandalf (McKellen). The first part of the trilogy deals with getting the One Ring out of Frodo's home country of the Shire, and the forming of the Fellowship of the Ring, those that seek to destroy the One Ring so that Sauron may never reacquire his old powers.
First of all, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous, with anal-retentive attention paid to being as close to Tolkien's details as possible. A casual movie-watcher won't appreciate everything, but most likely still be dazzled by the overall look of the film. This is also one of those weird movies where the right casting of characters seems to be far more important than acting ability. Everyone in the movie is good (some verge on greatness) but you're just hoping for a great representation of those well-known book characters. When I was younger, I kind of always pictured Val Kilmer as Strider, but that was mostly because of his performance as Madmartigan in Willow. Now that I'm older and understand the Strider character better, there aren't too many actors that would be better than Viggo Mortensen in that role. I would be remiss not to mention Ian McKellen's performance as one of the brightest lights in an already stunning movie.
I did mention that the movie strove to be as faithful to the books as possible, and there's one aspect of that I kind of wish were dampened just a bit. I'm sure it's been mentioned by many people before, but really, reading the books time and again, a definite theme of homo-eroticism developed. Now I watch wrestling, so I'm fairly okay with the homo-eroticism to the point where I can laugh it off now. Watching it on a movie screen - knowing as I do the personal choices of the cast and crew in regards to sexual preference - I have to say that the movie felt very gay indeed. But it felt fake and forced, not natural in the least. It was palpatable and it took me out of the movie a bit because it felt like Hollywood grandstanding. I hope the meaning of what I'm saying is coming across, and that it doesn't just read as gay-bashing because that's not my intent at all.
All in all, I have to say that I was still deeply impressed with the entire movie, in particular the excellent casting, the performances and the stunning action scenes. I will say that the Extended Edition is truly that, almost four hours in length. It's a massive undertaking for anyone that hasn't read the books, and if you're someone like that, you might want to just go with the regular editions. Most of the additional scenes in the Extended Version are tips of the hat to fans of the books, they don't really add anything huge to the story. Also, if you're expecting a natural ending to the movie, please remember that is the first part of three, so it's more like a cliffhanger movie serial.
4 / 5