This movie series was an absolute miracle. Filming three huge films simultaneously and releasing them one after the other was a tremendous gamble by New Line Cinemas and those behind the making of the film. Many seem to take it for granted that a Fantasy Film is a guaranteed hit these days. But prior to 2001, the only successful Fantasy Films were either the Disney Animated Fairy Tales or, in loose interpretation, the Star Wars films. No films like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter had ever proven successful in the box office and many failed to draw either critical or commercial praise. Sure, you had some films that drew cult followings, such as The Princess Bride, The Black Cauldron, or Willow, but none of these films could reach the landmark levels of success that Fantasy Series would in the 2000's and beyond.
While Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone would be released first, I think it's safe to say that Lord of the Rings was the more acclaimed, beloved and established the idea that a film franchise besides Star Wars could be successful. Harry Potter was a gamble, but not at all of the same level as J.R.R Tolkein's High Fantasy epic. The former had the mass appeal to younger readers as well as being a fresh book series yet to be finished. It might fizzle out, but the first was guaranteed to be a hit. The Fellowship of the Ring did not possess that luxury. It was far more Dungeons and Dragons styled Fantasy than it was something mainstream. It involved all of the tropes that make Fantasy such a niche genre to begin with: Prophecy, Magic, Orcs, Elves, Medieval Warfare, Demons, and Eurocentric Ideals of Divine Right and Fate. This film was about as massive of a gamble as any film in Hollywood's history. And thanks to the masterful direction from Peter Jackson, the marvelous mix of real sets and visual effects, the superb acting of the cast and the sheer determination of the filmmakers to make something that would not only hold up for generations to come but would be a massive critical and commercial hit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King are all films that are not only beloved by their fans, but by mainstream media as well. These films were massive successes on all fronts and truly set the stage for the renaissance of Fantasy in the 2000's with the rise of franchises like The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter as well as influencing Game of Thrones.
Plot: Several thousand years before the beginning of the story, many powerful rings were forged and given as gifts to the leaders of the three races that dominated the fictional kingdoms of Middle Earth: three to the Elves, seven to the Dwarfs, and nine to Men. But in secret, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a Ring with which to dominate all life and potentially even give him the power to command those with the rings he had bestowed upon them firstly. Sauron leads his armies of Orcs against the forces of Middle Earth, but is ultimately defeated by the son of the King of Gondor named Isildur, who cuts the Ring from Sauron's finger and ultimately destroys Sauron's body because of it. Isildur is tasked with destroying the Ring, but becomes corrupted by it's power and chooses to keep it, ultimately dying as the Ring passed out of thought and time. Eventually, the Ring was discovered by the creature Gollum, who clung to it maniacally for five hundred years before losing the Ring to a small creature known as a Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm).
Several decades later, Bilbo Baggins is hosting a party for his 111th birthday, though the power of the ring granted him unnaturally long life as well as the ability to turn invisible at a whim. He is ultimately confronted by his wizard friend Gandalf (Ian McKellen) over this and agrees to leave the Ring to his nephew Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) when he leaves to depart on one last adventure before he would ultimately die. Gandalf does some research on Sauron's Ring and discovers that this could in fact be the ring that was mentioned. With Sauron's spirit having endured his defeat at the hands of Isildur, Gandalf urges Frodo to take the Ring and hide in the village of Bree while he would seek the counsel of his fellow wizard named Saurman. Frodo, along with his friend and gardener Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) and the tagalongs of Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd), make for the village while being pursued by the riders of Sauron, known as Ringwraiths. They come under the protection of a ranger known solely as Strider, who promises to escort them as far as the Elven castle of Rivendell.
Gandalf is ultimately betrayed by Saruman (Christopher Lee), who believes it wiser to join Sauron than to oppose him and is locked away in the tower of Orthanc while the greedy Saruman builds an army of Orcs and Goblin Men to aid or perhaps supplant Sauron for dominion over Middle Earth. While breeding his own forces and destroying the neighboring forests in the process, Saruman is unable to stop Gandalf from escaping and making his own way to Rivendell.
Frodo and his group are attacked by the Ringwraiths, one of which impales Frodo with a blade that would corrupt him and turn him into one of them. Strider drives them off, but is unable to aid Frodo without the proper medicines. He then bestows Frodo onto his Elven Lover, Arwen (Liv Tyler), who leads the wounded and fading Frodo to Rivendell in front of Strider and the other Hobbits, barely managing to save Frodo in time. While in Rivendell, Frodo reunites with his Uncle Bilbo and Gandalf, as a Great Council is called for by Elrond of Rivendelle (Hugo Weaving), to determine the fate of the Ring. It is here that Frodo also learns that Strider is truly Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the descendant of Isildur and rightful King of Gondor. During the Council, Elrond compels those present that the Ring could not be wielded without fear of corruption and needed to be destroyed by being cast into the dark fires of the volcano where it was forged in Sauron's Lands of Mordor. Frodo volunteers to take the ring himself, but admits he does not know the way. Frodo is ultimately joined by his Hobbit Friends, Gandalf, Aragorn, the elven archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom), the dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and another human warrior named Boromir (Sean Bean) in becoming the Fellowship of the Ring. Once they armed and supplied, the group heads off to face the dangers of the world, knowing all too well that both Sauron and Saruman would be pursuing them and leading the group into one cataclysmic situation after another.
What's Wrong?: The flaws of Fellowship of the Ring are more like nitpicks than legitimate film criticism, but I feel compelled to address them. Because in the case of the first film in this series, the flaws are mostly stemming from how much from the books was cut out. Whole characters and scenes were cut from the film and placed elsewhere, or even just wholesale ignored (such as Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel). There's also the nitpicky issues regarding the timeskips in the series as well as the bizarre ages of these characters despite their clear signs of not aging, but I chalk that off to decisions made by Jackson to streamline the movie.
The biggest flaw people find with this movie is the character of Arwen, who was given something of a Xena Warrior Princess style of writing for her first appearance, whereas in the books, she remains basically a pretty face and the destined bride of Aragorn. In the film, they place her in the role that Glorfindel was supposed to occupy where she guides Frodo to Rivendell and even fends off the Ringwraiths. It's similar to the issue some have with Jasmine in Aladdin, where she does something bold and crazy in her first scenes and then devolves back into a pretty faced damsel in the end. Not a drastic flaw, but I can see it being strange considering Arwen does nothing of the sort action wise after this scene, not even in the sequels.
What's Right?: Basically everything else in this film is pure poetic majesty. I could go on for what would seem like page upon page of this talking about the actors, the set designs, the music, the editing, the fight choreography all the way down to the simple foreshadowing of roles in future movies. But, I'm going to try to keep my thoughts summarized and brief.
The acting is superb. Considering some of the A-List actors on display in this film, it shouldn't surprise anyone, but they even exceeded their own expectations. Elijah Wood is a superb Frodo Baggins, characterizing both the naivete and passionate sides of the hobbit very well. Ian McKellen was a masterful choice to play Gandalf, especially coming off the heels of his role as Magneto in the X-Men series. He portrays both the stoic, dangerous and lighthearted parts of Gandalf's character so well in these films. But the A+ scores I have to give out for this film in the acting department go to Christopher Lee as Saruman and Sean Bean as Boromir. Lee had always wanted to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings (having been a huge fan of the series all his life and was the only person involved in the making of the films to meet Tolkein), but as he would do with Count Dooku, he gives a masterfully chilling role as Gandalf's evil counterpart and gives the sense of maddening evil to Saruman that only a few actors can do right. Bean's performance is one and done in this series, but he is without a doubt the strongest actor in the Fellowship. He makes an otherwise unlikeable and cautionary tale of a character who can become easily corrupted by power into a dramatic and deeply emotional role about what constant warfare does to a man, giving him pathos and heroism that was missing from Tolkein's interpretation and one that Bean would later bring to his role as Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, though with much less stoicism on Boromir's part. Bean was a masterful choice and his death scene is among the most memorable in cinematic history.
While George Lucas was seemingly removing practical sets and filming on location in favor of Green Screen and visual effects, The Lord of the Rings trilogy used a blend of both CGI and practical sets so fluidly it's almost insulting that no other film studio attempted to replicate it. Most simply used the cheaper method of using too much CGI to make a film look better to those who were seeing it in theaters at the time, not caring how dramatically the film would age over a few years. Jackson and his crew used these old as time combinations of both practical and visual effects to tell their story in a way that it could both evoke movies of old while also looking fresh and new. And the effects and set design (with the exception of the Cave Troll) have aged tremendously well. Chiefly the entire Balrog sequence in the Mines of Moria is still one of the greatest in the history of fantasy films.
Speaking of that, the movie does a great job with the dialogue as well. It takes a lot of what to contemporary audiences would sound as a gibberish and gives it to Ian McKellen to do his acting magic with and becomes some of the most jaw dropping line reads I've ever seen. All of the actors have strange lines that they are able to convey well to the audiences through great delivery and emotional understanding and not through just sheer exposition. But the lines the writers added are even greater. Boromir's Death is still one of the most gut-wrenching scenes for me because of how well both Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean acted their parts and read their lines. Boromir's acceptance of Aragorn as his rightful king on his death knell is some deep stuff that I'm surprised films don't try to convey anymore (at least mainstream ones).
Last tip of the cap goes to Howard Shore for the film's musical score. As you all know from me, a film can only be as emotionally evocative as it's film score. And while John Williams and Hans Zimmer are probably the best in the business at it, I have to give credit to Howard Shore for this deep and moving music in this film. It borrows from both Celtic and Gaelic folk music and adds deep undertones of sinister ambition, heroic adventure and even deep senses of loss. The music Shore scored as the theme of the film is quite possibly the most famous film theme of all outside of possibly Star Wars or The Godfather. But my favorite piece of music is for when the Fellowship finally escapes from the Mines of Moria after Gandalf battled the Balrog. It's basically done solely through a choir (and by that I mean one voice) echoing the feelings of loss and deep shame the Fellowship has after the fall of it's de facto leader.
Overall: The Fellowship of the Ring is exactly how you start off a franchise like this. It takes what should have been the ending they give to the middle act of the story (like in Star Wars) and put it at the end of this film. You have genuinely no idea how the Fellowship will accomplish it's goals now, or if it's even possible. But the undercurrents of hope and adventure are just around the corner and you know the second film will deliver on it's promise to tell a fluid and moving story. While the series would never hit the technical perfection of this film again, it was definitely an eye opening film that would pave the way for the next two in the series. This is a phenomenal film that I would recommend to anyone, not even just Fantasy Fans. Just be prepared for the near 3 hour run time and longer for the Extended Editions.
No comments:
Post a Comment