Reviews

Watching this again recently, I found it heartwarming to see the way they sincerely tried to bring the book to the screen, even if the shoestring budget and hammy actors meant inevitable failure. By any objective measure this was a disaster, but I found it easy to imagination how good a Lord of the Rings movie could be if someone was to make one sincerely - and with the money to employ the most talented artists and script writers. Unfortunately, thanks to Jackson, that will not be possible for a long time.

Watching this movie left me with the impression that with any sort of budget at all, then this story simply couldn't be stuffed up. Fantasy just provides so many opportunities for making an interesting film. There were many moments in this film that were potentially more interesting than the way that Peter Jackson did it, although of course you always have to use your imagination due to the poor execution. The way they tried to show the wraith world from Frodo's point of view for example. Or the way that Galadriel showed Sam what was happening back home for another.

Another thing I really appreciated in this version - the silent moments. There were moments when dialog was spoken with no background music against a still back-drop. Compare that to the grandiose swooping camera of the Jackson films, and the intrusive score which seemed designed to stress how each and every scene was the most poignant and powerful scene we had ever watched. Jackson's films were full of their own importance, this was quieter and a lot more modest.

Jackson and co hit this with more than US$270 million dollars in production costs, at least $90 million dollars more for marketing, a massive tax break from the NZ government, and also gained massive savings from filming in NZ not the USA. However, despite the marketing claims, the intention to be faithful was never there. This is well documented. Philippa Boyens said as much in an interview, when she said they deliberately didn't re-read the books before writing the script. Jackson also stated that they originally intended to make a fantasy film "along the lines of" the lord of the rings, and that the one he really wanted to do was Return of the King, because it had a lot of battles but no character development.

In contrast, this film tried to be more true. Of course a lot of things were wrong, the acting was awful and pretty much sunk everything, and the pace was too fast. Naturally they cut a lot, and adapted other scenes, and for this they deserve credit. While Jackson added a lot of action scenes that served no plot purpose, Bakshi cut book scenes which did nothing to advance the plot anyway. There's actually a curious similarity between the structure of the Jackson and Bakshi films near the beginning - in that they both deviate from the original books in the same way - although of course some of this could be coincidence.

This was not a good film, but the potential was there. Bakshi said in an interview to the Onion AV club that only animation could do the lord of the rings justice. His version didn't work, but he might have been right.

A lot of people have called this a masterpiece, and I guess so many people can't be wrong. However, this movie just did not work for me at all.

When I look at the stills in the promotional books I see an incredible movie. The artwork and passion of the production crew is amazing. But unfortunately we got few opportunities to dwell on these efforts. In far too many scenes the camera was constantly moving in grand cinematic flourishes, with the effect that many of the scenes were often blurred and shaky. Worse, in the battle scenes the "shake and bash" camera style was used excessively. There was so much artistry in the sets and costumes, but it was spoiled by the constant camera motion and often ugly post-production. I also found the score to be incredibly intrusive, melancholy, and boring.

I thought the screenplay was very clumsy, with a lot of the added dialogue feeling inferior to the original. I was particularly turned off by Jackson's attempts to increase the excitement of every scene, to the point that was going on no longer had any credibility. If the bad guys are obviously unbeatable, then there's no sense of jeopardy any more. It all starts to feel phony and unbelievable. Jackson added a lot of scenes that were just excuses to show fights or special effects. These obviously increased the excitement for many, but not for me. Although I loved some of the deviations in the first movies, this time around the plot changes felt emotionally manipulative or like excuses for more special effects.

People are calling this a masterpiece, but really it's just a great original story dressed up with a lot of special effects and dumb fight scenes. Which is sad, because with the obvious passion and talent that went into these movies, they could easily have been great.

I thought this film was really brilliant and imaginative. Most films these days seem to lack imagination and so it is really something special when a movie possesses this quality. I did think the story was a little lame, but this was more than compensated for by the creativity of the artists who made it. I thought it was a million times better than Antz which seems pedestrian and lacking in imagination in comparison.