Wow. It took nearly 50 entries, but I am finally back to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The first entry in the challenge was actually the middle installment, The Two Towers, the one I think is the best of the series. But as I said then, the other two installments are also great in their own right, and the preferences I have are for relatively minor reasons. Besides, Fellowship is the only one I saw twice in the theater. I took a young cousin to see it when it first came out as a Christmas gift, and then later went with my brother when the film was re-released around Easter when there were some scenes tossed in at the end to act as a preview for The Two Towers.
And despite the nearly three hour runtime, I felt both times that I would have gladly sat in the theater longer at the end. I was that invested in what was happening.
That actually amazes me. I can’t claim to have seen any of director Peter Jackson’s New Zealand filmography. What I know of it by reputation is a lot of it weird, low budget, and often the sort of thing that gets a cult following. I did see The Frighteners on home video, a Michael J Fox-starring horror-comedy that tried to be innovation in the use of CGI but was, beyond that, not a film I can remember all that well. How did Jackson somehow get the Lord of the Rings job in the first place? He made all three films at the same time, the budget must have been far higher than anything he (or many other directors) had ever dealt with, all on location in his native New Zealand–seriously, these films may also double as the best tourism ad ever produced–and not only did he pull it off what might have been an impossible feat for any number of directors, but it actually holds up extremely well. The Lord of the Rings, much like the original Jurassic Park may have pioneered a lot of CGI special effects, but Jackson used practical effects where he could, using prosthetic make-up, forced perspective, and practical sets as often as possible. Compare that to Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, which was a lot more digital, and it shows. The Lord of the Rings Orcs, for example, look a lot more solid, with each Orc looking a bit different from each other. On The Hobbit, the Orcs all look a lot smoother and uniform. And that’s just one example.
That said, when The Lord of the Rings does use CGI, it largely holds up. The Balrog, the Cave Troll, the Mines of Moria, they all still look great. The one time I didn’t think the effects held up was when Legolas (Orlando Bloom) was jumping around on top of the Cave Troll. The Troll looked great. The Elf? Not so much.
That said, the real challenge for The Fellowship of the Ring was to introduce the world and concepts of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The opening three minutes alone, tracking the history of the One Ring, does about as good as job as can be expected. Narrated, first in Elfish and then in English by what sounds like Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, explains the rings exist, that the Elves got three, the Dwarves got seven, and the Men nine, that dark lord Sauron had One Ring that controlled the others and corrupted the Men into the Ring-Wraiths, but though Sauron was defeated, the Ring was taken away by one Isildur, lost in a river, found by poor Gollum (seen largely in shadows for the first film), before being found and taken home by humble Hobbit traveler Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm). Though it is never spelled out, the Ring corrupts the powerful and the proud. Humble creatures like Hobbits aren’t immune. It just takes them a lot longer to corrupt them.
And that’s about all the Ring does. For all the talk that it’s a powerful weapon, it seems to only turn the bearer invisible to anything that isn’t Sauron or one of his closest minions. As it is, the Ring doesn’t do much aside from make people worse. Bilbo’s nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood at his wide-eyed, innocent best) sees the Council of Elrond (Hugo Weaving) devolve into fighting and arguing, he sees it in the Ring’s reflection. Just about every member of the Fellowship who spends enough time near the Ring is tempted by its power. Some, like Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) are better at resisting it than others, while Sean Bean’s Boromir, though depicted as someone who wants to use the ring as a weapon against Sauron, also was seen teaching the other Hobbits how to fight, pulling his own weight even as he gets a little cynical at times (or as close as any heroic character in this series can get cynical), and being a friendly guy to the likes of Samwise (Sean Astin), Merry (Dominic Monaghan), and Pippin (Billy Boyd), moreso than any other member of the Fellowship. That Boromir dies after he nearly succumbs to the Ring’s influence and clearly hates himself for how close he came says a lot. He was a man who could admit that he made a mistake and ask forgiveness with his dying breath.
But did this film act as a good introduction? I mean, I saw this one twice in theaters, as I said above, but I had also read the books in advance and do enjoy some good high fantasy. But my parents sure as hell aren’t, and like many filmgoers, they made an annual trip to see the newest installment every year for three years. Yes, my dad initially may have though Ian McKellen was Patrick Stewart, and I couldn’t get the two of them to remember the difference between the Troll and the Balrog (to be fair, the Balrog makes a much better impression), but they did know what Orcs are since Dad remembered Aragorn’s saying they were going Orc hunting at the end of the film to rescue Merry and Pippin. So, yeah, it worked.
Conversely, my ex-wife is a huge Tolkien fan. I was eventually able to convince her to give Game of Thrones a chance based solely only Sean Bean’s presence. That took about six months, all while selling it as a more politically realistic take on The Lord of the Rings. It says a lot that she nearly quit when Bean’s Ned Stark was killed, but that she had become so attached to the characters that she stuck with it Actually, now that I think about it, she stayed with Game of Thrones longer than she did our marriage.
Well, that was mildly depressing.
Regardless, Fellowship of the Ring works as well as it does as an introduction by keeping things relatively small. After the opening prologue, there are no large-scale battles between entire armies. Yes, the Fellowship itself battles a lot of Orcs, but the bigger battles, like Two Towers‘s Battle of Helm’s Deep, is for the next film. Given how much the Fellowship, complete with four Hobbits that learned how to fight like give minutes earlier, make short work of various Orcs, it’s a wonder the Orcs are much of a threat at all. But this is also the film that arguably uses the most magic–for a wizard, Gandalf doesn’t cast many spells, and pretty much all of them are in this first part–and even the most overall creepiness. The Shire is a bucolic paradise, and the Elf lands are arboreal dreams-come-true, but Gandalf, Galadriel, and even the friendly storyteller Bilbo all show horrifying faces, and the sudden screams of the Ring-Wraiths, withb their faceless cowled forms appearing whenever the heroes are getting too comfortable, are reminders that evil is afoot, and it may be too much for anyone to handle.
But for me, I saw this one, sat there for nearly three hours, and might have gone for another hour or two as Frodo and Sam crossed that river to continue the journey to Mordor alone. There may be evil in Middle-Earth, but there were still heroes, larger-than-life though they may seem, who won’t be giving up without a fight, no matter how hopeless it may seem. And that’s the sort of story anyone can get behind.
NEXT: Well, I have been sitting through some three hour films of late, but the next one may take the cake for length since there are two versions: one at three hours, and one at over five. Which one will I go for? Come back soon when I have some thoughts on the great Swedish director Igmar Bergman’s 1982 period drama Fanny and Alexander.
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