ragically, I did not begin blogging until late January, 2002. A month too late to work in a LotR:FotR review. Not that there's any guarantee I would have written one if I'd been blogging in December of 2001, since my early blogs were more about personal thoughts and psychological issues and such, and less about entertainment and pop culture.  I started out with high ideals, you see. Ideals that lasted about as long as a shy girl at a frat party.

Anyway, I've blogged about the first LotR movie several times since then, but never given it a full review. I'm not going to do so now, but I will throw in a quick categorized review score sheet, as I do for every movie I review. Since I can't go back in time and recreate my first reaction to the film, I'm just going to give my current review of the he DVD extended edition; a score that's considerably higher than my first review score would have been. I liked it at first, but thought there were some problems and couldn't stop comparing the movie's plot to the book's plot, since I'd just reread the whole trilogy shortly before the first movie was released. As things stand today, I would definitely put the LotR:FotR Special Extended Edition DVD in my top 5 movies ever, and the scores obviously reflect that.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Special Extended Edition
Script/Story: 10
Acting/Casting: 9
Action: 9
Eye Candy: 10
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 10
Overall: 10

Prior to this review, I'd given about two 10s ever, to anything, in any movie review. I was surprised to see 10s appearing here, but I don't have a problem standing behind them. This is my favorite of the 3 movies, though that's a preliminary judgment since I'm writing this in July 2004, and the Extended Edition Return of the King won't be out for 5 months yet.

I give the story and script a 10 since it's almost perfect. The first LotR book is very good, but the first movie's script was better. It kept everything that worked in the novel while dumping digressions (Tom Armadillo and the Weeping Willow and the Wraith and the slow exit from Bree), and it compressed the time flow to create more tension. The acting was great, the action was awesome, and the eye candy was astounding. The NZ scenery was great, every costume and set was perfect, and the color processing made it all look so magical and vivid. As for the replayability, I've seen it at least a dozen times, and can still happily watch the whole 3+ hours again, start to finish, at any time. And that is something I can't say about any other movie, ever.

I'm also reviewing this with the benefit of much hindsight, having seen and loved the other movies, repeatedly, over the last 2.5 years.

That flashback review aside, here are a collection of blog entries about the movie, made over the past couple of years.  The oldest entries are on top, with more recent ones proceeding as you scroll down the page.

August 10, 2002

Here's a belated LotR semi-review..

My dad bought LotR and I watched about 90 minutes of it at his house, before stealing the DVD to watch the rest over here.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, more than I thought I would.

I'd seen it twice in the theatre, last December.  The first time my mind was entirely occupied with cataloguing the differences between it and the book, against my will. I wanted to just watch and enjoy, but I'd read the book recently, and found myself analyzing everything for differences and changes.  I approved of most of them, so it wasn't like a sticking point, but it was distracting.

The second time I was bored during the first hour, wanting them to get to the action in Moria and later. All of that stuff was awesome though, well worth the wait.

This time I was enraptured by the opening, enjoyed the Shire stuff, didn't mind the Bree and hiking around parts, and really enjoyed the action.  Moria and the Balrog were somewhat disappointing, not as awesome as I remembered them being on the big screen, and oddly enough a lot of the high moving shots looked very obviously special effects now, when I didn't notice that in the theatre.  You'd think that it being 60 feet wide would make it look more fake, rather than the opposite.

I remembered being just blown away by the one long shot of them running across the bridge in Moria, with the Balrog behind them, whereas now it just looked like CG figures on a model bridge.  Still a cool scene, but less so.  I did hear what Gandalf was saying before the big "You will not pass!" line this time, when it just seemed to be muttering in some ancient tongue before.

I can't quote, but it's something about how he's protected against fire, and therefore isn't afraid of the Balrog.  Which ties into his ring, he has one of the original Elven rings, and its properties are fire.  I wonder if that'll be explained more later on, when he tells them how he survived the fall?

The much-advertised ten-minute TTT preview isn't too impressive.  It's not bad, but the actual film footage is only a couple of minutes, and nothing you've not seen in the trailer already.  The stuff with the guy doing the Gollum motion capture is pretty cool, and the wire masks and such they use for the special effects of that, but it's basically a "making of" type feature, rather than the extended movie preview that I'd hoped for.

If you do get the DVD and watch the bonus features, skip the Fox TV special, it's just awful.  Mostly due to the "Mr. Voice" narrator, who is horrible for epic fantasy.  He sounds like a used car salesman, or the guy who does the, "Coming up next, it's a full hour of The Simpsons!" during station breaks.

Nevertheless, I'm dying to see TTT in December anyway.

I had the movie on just as background noise while I was doing most of the Band Names Rating thing for the last couple of hours, and it's even good for that.

November 26, 2002

I've seen the whole LotR:Special Edition now, most of the bonus features twice, and it's really great.  I mean duh, of course it's great, but it's better than I expected.  I generally find the "making of" features on DVDs pretty boring, or at least mediocre, just a bunch of outtakes and footage of the director squinting into a monitor watching the playback.  That's not the case with the Lotr:FotR SE though, it's got 2 DVDs worth of bonus features and they're worth watching on their own.  Well produced and edited, they are mini-features and they cover virtually everything.

The sound, the special effects, the music, the cast, the story, the locations, etc.  The music and sound and special effects features are amazing, as are the trickseses they used to make the hobbits look so much smaller.  Little doubles, big doubles, blue screen, false perspective, shooting scenes on their knees, and even some digital effects putting false faces on the little doubles.  The false perspective stuff is great; looks so good in the movie, and they show the making of and the characters are sitting five feet behind each other, looking to their sides, at empty air, pretending they are side by side.  They had two of almost every prop, a big and small version, and they'd have to switch everything out for every shot, and do tons of editing to work them in together. They made everything custom for the film; all the hundreds of costumes, all the armor and weapons, built every building. Two versions of lots of them, two Bag End's, one to a much larger scale.

One thing I find amazing about the dialogue is that they really dug into the Elfish and Dwarfish and other ancient tongues, and all of the characters had to learn them to do the lines in the actual languages, with proper inflection and accent and everything.  Which is silly, but cool at the same time.  I mean like 10 people on earth actually know the languages Tolkien made up for the book well enough to notice if the characters are actually speaking coherent sentences or gobbledygook.  So why spend the time and effort and actually have on-set language experts to get it all right, if it won't make any difference to 99.9% of the people who see the movie? Just because they cared.

Even better, they actually had a writer write original songs, in the various non-human tongues.  Those are what you hear choruses belting out in the background of a lot of scenes, and it's not just people singing things that sound good; they went to the trouble to write epic songs for those races, arranged the words to work as a song, and had people sing that, when you can hardly hear them in the movie, and again, 99.9% of the people watching don't even notice it, much less speak Dwarfish to know if the words make sense.  Great attention to detail/borderline insanity.

The color treatments done on the final film is one of the best things.  It's how the lighting is always so good, how the grass is so green and the background is golden with falling sunlight, and how colors are so desaturated in Moria, or washed out in the snow scenes.  They show a lot of it side by side, the actual film look and the tweaked version in the final film, and it's amazing how much better it looks after the treatment.  Light cloudy skies turn deep and silvery, character's faces are given more light and luminosity, eyes are shaded to look gloomy, etc.  It's very cool, and even the software they use for it is amazing; like some sort of super Photoshop. In one example they show a scene with Boromir and Aragorn, where Aragorn is behind him, and the guy running the software picks a spot on Aragorn's face, marks that as the target spot, and as the scene runs, the software tracks that location.  He then inserts an oval and ups the lightness of it somewhat, and that brightens the face, and tracks with the dot as the scene runs.  Presto, Aragorn goes from a face you can hardly see in a dark shot to looking as clear as if he had a flashlight shining on him.

I'd say the best thing in the movie were the miniatures they built.  The elf forest and Moria were just amazing, built to this tiny scale they could film with tiny cameras moving all around, and then digitally insert the actors and lighting and such.  They did these massive towers, a huge hobbit mill that's on film for about 5 seconds, and lots of others that haven't been seen yet.  The full Saruman's tower model is amazing, with the holes in the ground around the outside of it, where the orcs have forges and giant treadmills and hellish lighting.  They should cut them up into 4x4 squares and sell those off; I'd love to have one, not that I could afford it, but they are just beautiful.  I can't believe the detail and texture they get on rocks and buildings and little tendrils of ivy, trees, leaves, coloration of rocks and weathering.  It's like the best model railroad ever.  Just without a train.

One thing I didn't much notice in LotR was the acting, and I realize that I usually don't, in films.  If someone is awful or seems very miscast I'll find it distracting, but generally I don't pay much attention to the acting.  Most critics seem to notice that most of all, or at least feel they should in their comments on a movie. I notice the casting more than the actual acting; as long as the person in the role seems appropriate for it and their lines are good, it's transparent to me.

The best acting I can think of off hand was Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.  In that role he vibrates with energy and intensity, and has great lines as well.  Since he won an Oscar for it, obviously I'm not alone on this one.  In another case that leaps to mind, I thought Robert Patrick, playing the liquid metal T-1000 in Terminator 2, was great.  Very robotic with his expressionless face and even the body language.  His movements were very controlled and spare, even when running full speed.  A similar performance was by Hugo Weaving, who played Agent Smith in the Matrix, and was Elrond in LotR as well (leading dozens of wits to fight the urge to spit out, "Welcome to Rivendale, Mr. Anderson." when he first speaks to the post-injury Frodo.)  I thought he was great in The Matrix, playing a computer.  Similar to the T-1000 in body language and emotional control, and I thought he did a great job at it.

Showy performances with lots of over the top emotions don't seem to impress me much; it's like any idiot can scream and shout and carry on hysterically or furiously.  It's roles that have a person being very quiet and controlled, especially if they are non-human, that impress me. Most people, critics and academy voters anyway, seem to disagree and tend to vote for the "chewing up the scenery" type performances. Or else the retard/cripple, as everyone jokes when the actor in such a handicapped role always seems to win: My Left Foot or Rainman or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or As Good as it Gets or Forrest Gump, etc.

Anyway, I didn't notice any performance in LotR 1 as especially good or bad.  I thought Saruman camped it up a bit, and Sam wasn't quite devoted enough, but he doesn't really get that way until further along.  Anyway, for the first movie everyone was pretty good, or at least good enough. The movie is not very actor-dependent, with a good story and an ensemble cast and lots of make up and special effects, so as long as no one is just awful, like Stallone bad, it could overcome any mediocre performances. The special feature disks spend a lot of time on the other aspects of the movie, but a bit too much on the acting and actors, in my view.  I'd have liked more on the miniatures and special effects and putting it all together, and less of the hobbits whining about their prosthetic feet or talking about how well everyone got along and what a great experience it was to all be together in NZ for the 15 months they were filming.

But given that this is based on my admitted indifference to acting performances, you can penalize me for lacking objectivity if you feel the need.

As for the special edition movie, which is over 30 minutes longer, I think it's awesome.  Improves on an already great film, especially if you know the books well, since a lot of the scenes cut from the theatrical release are small things pulled right from the books.  One early in Moria, for instance, where they're talking about the wealth of the mines, and Gandalf tells them it was not in jewels or gold, but in mithril, the rare metal used for top quality weapons and armor.  Gandalf says that Bilbo was given a mithril shirt by Balin, and Gimli chimes in, in an impressed voice, "That was a kingly gift!"  Bilbo looks down, appearing self-conscious, since he's wearing it.  Gandalf adds something to the effect of, "I never told him, but it was worth more than the entire Shire."

This is almost verbatim from the novel, and I think nicely set up the later discovery that he was wearing it and it saved him from the cave troll's spear strike, which would probably seem sort of weird to people who hadn't read the books.  I mean it looks like soft chain armor, why would they be so impressed that he was wearing it, and why would it save him from being killed by such a strike?  I didn't think the stab was shown that well either, for that matter.  In the movie I mean. In the book it was like the troll charged and hit him full speed and pinned him to a wall, so it really should have killed him instantly.  In the movie it looked like a half-strength stab, not that huge of a hit, one that any decent ring/chain mail could have stopped, though he'd still be flattened by the impact. If someone runs into you with a car it's going to crush you, whether they have sharp points on the front of it or not. Unless the armor was more than just something to make him cut-proof, but had some sort of shock-absorbing force field property.  Anyway, this is going off track.

The other bonus scenes are all along those lines; minor things that added to the characters and weren't really essential (obviously) but that improved it over all.  They just thought 3.5 hours would be pushing it too far for one sitting; you almost need an intermission at that length.

Peter Jackson said that the first rough cut came in around 4.5 hours, so they had to cut out around 90 minutes.  They decided to make it more "Frodo-centric", making him and the ring really the keys to the movie.  So most things about other characters, that weren't essential to stuff planned for movies 2 and 3, got cut entirely, or at least trimmed a lot.  The fight scenes are even longer in the full version, and they pretty well roxor.  The one famous scene in the final Uruk-Hai battle where Legolas goes uber-sniper and nails three orcs with his bow, "thwip thwip thwip", in one long shot, is even longer.  He actually shoots 7 of them in that, and the theatrical version only shows the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, as I remember. All one shot, as the orcs run up and he picks them off one after the other with seemingly flawless precision. Of course it's all stunt men taking dives while Legolas pretends to fire arrows; they had to digitize those in since Orlando Bloom couldn't physically pull out arrows, knock them, and fire them that quickly. So he just pantomimed the arm movements.

The only added thing in the SE that I thought was less good ("worse" seems such a cruel word) was the opening.  Not the very opening, which is the prologue with scenes from the death of Sauron and then the loss of the ring; that's a bit longer, but essentially unchanged.  After that though, the theatrical goes right to Frodo reading under a tree in the perfectly-green meadow, when he hears Gandalf approach on his wagon, singing softly.

In the SE, the prologue goes to Bilbo, writing his book, which is The Hobbit, more or less.  However he opens it with Concerning Hobbits, which is the prologue of the Lord of the Rings.  A very altered version of that passage, which I just went and looked at in the paperback to remind myself.  The movie version is sort of similar, a thumbnail discussion of what hobbits and their life in the Shire is like, and while Bilbo is writing his voice over is heard, while there are dozens of images of hobbits.  Farming, talking, drinking ale, catching chickens and pigs, etc.  Very cute and pastoral.  There's about 3 minutes of that, before someone knocking on the door distracts Bilbo, and he shouts to Frodo to answer the door.  He shouts a second time, and says, "Where is that boy?" which then cuts to Frodo under the tree, as the movie opens.

I liked the info and scenes of the hobbits, but I prefer the theatrical opening.  I don't see how to get both in with the Bilbo section after the Frodo opening, it would be too big a break in the Frodo/Gandalf in the cart scene. There was a pretty big change in what Frodo and Gandalf talk about on the cart also, namely the whole part where Frodo asks what's going on in the outside world, and Gandalf says how unusual that is, and then that life continues much as it has, with seldom a mention of hobbits for which he's profoundly grateful.  That part is entirely gone in the SE version, so you don't get that Frodo is curious beyond what a hobbit is normally, nor that most people don't know about Hobbits, nor that Gandalf is happy to keep things that way.  Minor point, but I thought it was better left in.

The elf forest scene is much better in the SE also.  I liked the gift presentation, and the initial conversation before they are allowed into the heart of the forest.  The elf queen Galadriel is better in the SE also, less of a mind-reading icy witch, and much warmer and nicer and more heartening.  There are also several more scenes between Aragorn and Boromir, and it's nice to get more of Boromir's character before he dies. In the SE he's ring-obsessed right from the first look at it during the conference in Rivendale, nearly touching it when it's on the pedestal before Gimli tries to smash it with an axe.  The evil voice starts shouting as he comes near it, and Gandalf stands up and shouts it off while the sky darkens.  Rather a cool scene that doesn't exist at all in the theatrical version.

I won't go on and on, but there are a ton of differences, both minor and less minor and if you care you'll get the SE to check them out.  I recommend it.

Plus there's that free admission ticket to Lotr:TTT, which is like $9 off, depending on movie prices where you live.  Pay for your popcorn and a drink, if you actually buy that sort of thing at the movie. I smuggle in a candy bar and eat beforehand; personally.  And don't drink your weight in Dr. Pepper, FFS.  You can pee when it's over and not miss five minutes of the film in the process.

One last thing is that the nearly flawless special effects in LotR make me wonder what movies will be like in another 20 years?  You look at a movie from 1980 now, or even 1990, and the special effects are just so lame.  Obvious blue screens in every shot, any sort of creature is either bad claymation or even worse computer animation, and nothing is as impressive as what you'll see on any random Sci Fi TV show these days.

Yet at the time, that stuff was state of the art and looked amazing, to our naive eyes.  Much as good special effects look virtually flawless today.  Will the technology continue to progress as quickly, and a movie in 2024 will make LotR's effects look like the glowing bluescreen stuff you see in Willow?  I don't see how it could; I mean long shots in LotR are entirely special effects, like the Balrog, and they just look perfect.  As in no room for improvement.  But then again, I probably thought that in 1988 watching Willow...  Time will tell.

At the least, the computer inserted stuff will get better and better and easier and cheaper, so movies will be able to do more of it.  Whether that's a good thing or not will depend on how it's used, of course. Now you see purely CG stuff, like space battles, and they look good, but you can tell it's made with computer graphics.  It doesn't look like 2001, or even Star Wars, where they are actual models with the detail that allows. In 10 or 20 years they'll probably be doing movies like Final Fantasy, which was entirely computer graphics, and it will be virtually indistinguishable from real actors.  Will anyone with some software and a state of the art PC be able to make a movie with the image quality of Shrek or Toy Story in a month on their home computer, rendering it on the fly?

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