Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler, John Rhys-Davies, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving and Ian Holm.
Music by: Howard Shore.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema.
Year of release: 2001.
Run time: 228 Minutes.
Budget: $93 Million.
Gross Revenue: $870, 761, 744.
So the blu-ray extended editions of The Lord of the Rings have been released and I managed to watch the first instalment with friends just the other day. I realise that everyone has seen these movies already, but I thought I would write about them because... Fuck you, that’s why.
The Lord of the Rings has always been dear to me. At high-school when the inevitable Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter debate came up it was always no contest. Harry Potter had a bunch of kids stumbling awkwardly through their adolescence and Lord of the Rings had fucking Aragon handing a delicious pot of smack down to a bunch of cloak wearing mother-fuckers, culminating with him throwing a burning torch at one and setting him on fire. You won’t find that at Hogwarts, I always used to say. Also the lines are just more memorable in LOTR. Anytime I walk through the automated sliding doors at shopping centres, I’m sure to whisper ‘Mellon’ so that no one around me will hear it. Don’t get me wrong, Harry Potter had its charms too, but I didn’t hear anyone cheering in the cinema during Goblet of Fire. In the cinema where I first viewed Fellowship however, the crowd erupted in spontaneous applause when Aragorn beheaded that huge orc that killed the troubled, yet ultimately good, Boromir.
Fellowship is defintiely my favourite of the trilogy, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the quality of the other films. I suppose it’s because I saw Fellowship with both my parents when they were still together. It was during the following year that they separated and ultimately divorced. So I went into Fellowship still firmly in the familial nest, at the tender age of fifteen when the ideas of magic and wonder were still very accessible to me. The next year, after the nest was ripped apart, I viewed The Two Towers through a much more cynical lens. I still enjoyed it, but only amidst a cloud of anxiety and general stress. When I watched Fellowship again, I was able to remember the good times that I had with my family, because seeing it at the cinema was one of the good times we had. I’m not sure whether that’s sad or not, but I think it speaks to the way in which pop. culture is so deeply enmeshed with our own emotional development. At least if you were one of the awkward kids at high-school.
The Good: The atmosphere of mystery and awe that is generated so well in this first chapter. A lot of the scenes are ‘talking’ scenes, and we definitely get the sense that some bad shit is gonna go down before it’s all over. The intensity is brought across in the dialogue which is laced with a subtext of apocalyptic anxiety. Even Elrond walks around like he is in need of a cigarette, and he’s the king of the most peaceful race in Middle-Earth! Also, the killer musical score that reaches an explosive climax during the mines of Moria—specifically the part where Aragorn and Frodo successfully jump from the massive broken piece of stair-case and the fellowship triumphantly run off as an alternate chorus of Howard Shore’s score blares.
The Bad: I’m also a big fan of the books, and I’m a bit pissed that I can’t read them now without imagining Elijah Wood as Frodo. I used to have this clear image of what I thought Frodo—and hobbits in general—looked liked, but that’s all shot to shit thanks to these movies which I’m sure executed the imaginations of thousands of Tolkien fans.
The Ugly: The king and queen Elves in Lothlorien talk too slowly. I remember being mesmerised by how cool they were when I first saw the movie. Now they just sound like they have a slight mental retardation.
I was tempted to give this a four star rating just because I didn’t want to look like too much of a geek, but
fuck that shit right? It’s Lord of the Rings man.
Five Stars:
No comments:
Post a Comment