The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Review
In just over a month, the tv show called The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power drops on Amazon Prime. In preparation for that I’ve decided to review all of the Middle Earth movies before this show drops. So today we are talking about The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring. Let’s get started!
NOTE: As we go into this review, I’ve seen the first 30-45 minutes a couple of times but this was my first time watching the movie from beginning to the end. So that is my perspective going into this movie, a first time watch for me.
The Good:
And with this movie, this is truly one of the most epic fantasy movies out there. Where from the very beginning you see the scope, scale, and size of this movie. And it continues that scope all through-out the movie. The opening 7 minutes of this movie is the prologue of how The Ring came to be. And in that scene, I understood that this is a true fantasy epic. I can understand why this is a movie, and a trilogy that has been loved for over 20 years now. And this movie just hooked me from the very beginning with its prologue. And I think also with the scope, scale, and size you have to talk about Peter Jackson’s direction. Where he just knows how to make these epic feeling and looking movies, and he provides those talents to this movie.
Also, the movie does have some great world building inside of it. That might also tie into the epic scale of the movie. But this movie does a great job of establishing all of the rules of this world, who the characters are. We know very early on who the villain of the movie is, we know what our target is. So they just did a great job of creating a world that you are interested in being in, and it just flashes everything out. And they also borrowed some great source material by J.R.R. Tolkien who in his books wrote Middle Earth to be some compelling, and they bring all of the world building to this movie.
From there, the action in the movie is handled very well. Going into this movie, I thought there would be more action then there actually is. But you still get plenty of great fantasy action with elves, goblins, and dwarfs fighting each other. You get people using swords, Legolas uses a bow and arrow, Gandalf is a wizard so he can do some fun magical things. So you do get plenty of variety when it comes to the action. And the visuals for the action I think look very very cool, this movie is over 20 years old and I think the visuals hold up. I didn’t notice any shaky or questionable CGI in the action or just in general while watching the movie.
And I also was surprised at just how good the score for this movie is. Where there are so many tunes and themes played through-out the movie that are memorable. And they stick in your head as this epic fantasy score. And Howard Shore just created one of the best fantasy scores of all time.
Finally, the cast here is very good and they got a lot of top tier talent. The stand-out for me would be Sir Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, a very iconic character and a performance that got McKellen an Oscar nomination. And I think he does a great job playing this wizard, and a bit of a mentor figure to the rest of the team. Viggo Mortenesen as Aragon is another solid actor to throw into this movie, and I like the character of Aragon and I think Viggo’s performance adds to my likeness of the character.
The Bad:
And the big thing here is this movie is nearly 3 hours long, the exact run time is 2 hours and 58 minutes. Should this movie have been this long? No, probably not. Because the title of the movie is “The Fellowship of the Ring '', they travel to Mount Doom to destroy the ring. The Fellowship doesn’t get formed until 90 minutes into the movie. Where basically the first 90 minutes of the movie are introducing this world and characters. And I don’t know if we needed quite that much set-up for this movie. Trim the movie by 15-20 minutes, and I think that would have been good.
Also, I found all of the actors for The Hobbits to be miscast. I didn’t buy Elijah Wood as Frodo, this character that is “the one” that needs to save the world. The performance by Wood just never worked for me, I never bought his performance. No hate towards him whatsoever, that’s just my opinion. Likewise, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan just feel out of place with the rest of the movie.
Final Thoughts: As somebody who has heard so much about this movie, I thought it was a great introduction to Middle Earth. And from the very beginning I felt the epic scale of this trilogy with the shots that Peter Jackson used. Mixed with the great world building it just has this epic feel to all of it. There are some minor issues here and there, but overall I really dug this movie. And I can see why this movie is beloved.
The Score: 9.0/10 (A-)
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