Review : The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring : A Trilogy of bizarre fantasy from J.R.R Tolkien's Imagination, and the movies have been made with that in mind. It starts with a meek hobbit of the Shire and his eight companions setting out on a journey of unimaginable danger to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring and defeat the dark lord Sauron.



Hi Everyone
Welcome to my newest film review, which is 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. The first instalment of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy of novels, inspired by the visionary of J.R.R Tolkien and brought to life from the page to screen by Award Winning Director Peter Jackson. Over the next 3 days, I will be reviewing all three Lord of the Rings movies to celebrate what is a pretty awesome trilogy  when you come to think about it. 

I mean I haven't read the books, but I do think that Peter Jackson has done a very good job at potentially stepping up the mark to produce three very strong films. Bringing to life Tolkien's visions as he wrote them down in the books and taking that and turning it into a feature length epic film. For me one does stand out as being the best, but I do like all three in their own way. 

I should though not just for Peter Jackson but for any director, it's a very daunting challenge and incredibly brave to adapt a book into a film because there are only so many thing that can cross ones mind, and concern the public attention and expectations of what they want from it. When going into Fellowship the Introduction is great, really good start to the film, gets people interested as well as informed so they know right from the start what the films going to be about, what they are going to expect from it.

Then we are introduced to Frodo and to Gandalf and the shire and the whole shire set up is just fantastic, The shire set is by far my favourite set up of the whole film, because everything about it seems to me like what Tolkien had dreamed up and described it to be, so its a very accurate description putting those words on a page to visually constructing it. 

And one of the nice things about that scene is, whilst the shire scene is going on, there is also a little re cap which refers back to the events of The Hobbit. Which I think is a nice little nod to The Hobbit trilogy and Gandalf's line of 'If your wondering about that incident with the dragon, I was barely involved'. sums it all up for me, and there's also nice background done to Bilbo as well and Gandelf's friendship with him, so in terms of development strategy there is lots and lots and lots to follow up on. To say that there's not enough character development would be untrue, and the actors give an excellent performance from the word 'Go'.

Then we have Bilbo's Party which is a nice light hearted comedy scene, which I still think today is very fun, playful scene that people can reminisce in they watch it and go 'oh wow, look at how much of a good time their having' and then after that its when things start to get dark, Bilbo's corruption and idea of possession with the ring which has corroded him and taken over him, his character just flips its like he's not controlling the ring, the ring is controlling him. There's an underlined message of power and greed happening, and Gandalf is aware of this, which is one of the things I like about Gandalf's character, he's very intuitive, he knows when somethings up. 

Then everything starts to unfold, more and more characters like Frodo and Sam get involved so now, their in danger because they got themselves mixed up in all this. They soon embark on a dangerous quest to take the ring to mordor to destroy it. It's only once the journey happens, the real adventure begins and 'Fellowship' is all about the introductions, for me. It's about setting up a strong, constructive beginning so that you start the journey and your on a journey with Frodo and Sam and the Hobbits, as well as they are.

Though I do admire 'Fellowship' for that, it's not my favourite of the trilogy simply because it lacks the sentimental factor of dramatic interest, some moments do progress more slowly then they need to which of course is time consuming for your story telling. Which just goes to prove this film didn't need to be as long as it did. I'm sure that all the raw basics and brilliant character development and all the introductions could of been achieved in just under 100 minutes rather than 178 minutes which is the films length.

Which concludes my first review on 'Lord of the Rings'. Fellowship for me is about the starting point and how well it starts off. I think it was an well thought out and developed start, just half an hour too long. 7/10.