#50: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

OMG!  This is the greatest movie I have ever seen in my life!  Well, not really, but I did think so when this movie first came out.  This week I am reviewing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.  Unlike all the other movies I have watched from the AFI Top 100 to date, this one I was extremely excited to watch.  I love this movie.  I would say I am a fanboy but then I have seen people who go to Comic-Con so I guess I'll just say I am a fan.  Just to give you some background on how much I love these movies and stories here are some of the things I have done:
See this movie in theaters either five or six times
Read the whole trilogy of books every year before each movie came out
Watch the cartoon (which did have some awesome songs)
Attend a special screening of Return of the King where I also got to watch Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers extended cuts in theaters (that was a very long day)
Anyways, all this to say that this review will be very positive.

This was the first movie in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy made by Peter Jackson.  All movies were shot at the same time over a eight year span.  I know this film isn't the first to do this but I also know it was the first time I heard of a franchise doing that and I hear about it a lot more now.  Also this film was so big that it made the fantasy genre main stream and even "cool" to like.  References to this movie are made all the time

All of us nerds should be thankful movies like this do well.  This film was also nominated for thirteen academy awards winning four of them for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score.

Now since the internet is always right we will take a look at how it scores there:
IMDB= 8.8 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes (Critic Rating)= 92%
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Rating)= 92%
These scores really show just how well this fantasy movie was received.  I do honestly believe that franchises like this made it possible for fantasy movies to be taken seriously.

Now lets talk about what I think of this movie (get ready for a very biased review) starting with the characters.  Okay, so there are a lot of characters in this movie like Bilbo, Gollum, and Agent Smith who don't really play a big role, at least in this movie.  We also have a pair of girls, Liv Tyler playing Arwen and Cate Blanchett as Galadriel.  Now though I really don't care for either of these characters there is one thing that really bugged me about them and the story.  In the movie it is talked about how beautiful and attractive Galadriel is yet Arwen is talked about in the same manner.  This pisses me off like there is no tomorrow (why is this a saying?).  I hate it when there is obviously a more attractive actress playing a role yet another actress' character is seen to be more beautiful by the characters in the story.  Anyways.... lets look at the bad guys. First off we have the dark riders though they aren't much character wise they did give my girlfriend and her mom nightmares so I guess they did their job.  We also have Sauron who is just an eyeball in the sky and the traitor white wizard Saruman (sorry if calling him a traitor is a spoiler but their names are practically the same).  Now we come to the Fellowship, our main heroes.  First off we have Boromir which I'm just glad he kept his head on in this movie.  Then we have Gimli who is okay in this movie but he is still often used a comedic relief and it makes me a little mad because in the books he is a little more of a BAMF.  As we talk about the next character I need to admit that this will be extremely biased as this character has helped shape my life and make me the man I am today.  Legolas is a bad-ass elf who shoots arrows and is awesome and kills people and is awesome and has cool elf skills/powers and is awesome.  This character alone has made me obsessed with elves.  When I play WoW I am a elf, when I play D&D I am an elf, and when Skyrim comes I will be an elf.  He just showed me how awesome elves are.  Aragorn played by Viggo Mortensen is also a bad-ass and both my mom and my girlfriend felt that he looks the best as this character though neither could explain why.  We have Gandolf, the anti-Dumbledore, who is wise yet more human then typical characters in this role.  He does do magic but it seems to most of the time to just be fireworks, which in that case China used to have a lot of wizards.  Hobbits are awesome, funny, and I love them a ton.  Merry and Pippin are just hilarious and a ton of fun.  It is great to see what I feel is a normal person going on a huge adventure where they are way over their heads.  Though it is weird to look at Merry and not think of Charlie.  Sam (Rudy) is great and his relationship with Frodo is endearing though many people got a gay vibe from the two of them.  To those people I say, I guess you haven't seen the cartoon:

I bet the look pretty straight in the live action movie now, huh?  This leads me to Frodo who is my least favorite person in the Fellowship mainly cause he is a annoying whiner the whole time.  I guess his burden is hard but, its still annoying.  Though thinking of Frodo does remind me of this:

My friend tried to reenact this for hours as he continued to fall on his back and catch his ring on his finger.  He never did it.

The story is great.  I really like the epic adventure and though there are differences between the books and the films I was able to look past them and enjoy the movie for what it was.  The movie is really really really really long especially since I had the extended version.  Those there is one thing that I always was curious about, why is it called Middle-Earth?  Is it the middle of our Earth?  is it in the Earth's core?  Where is Right or Left Earth?  As I ask these questions I guarantee there are nerds out there who know this answer.  The script was great as well with only a few times where I laughed at the lines when they weren't meant to be funny (there is one point when Gandolf mentions following his nose and all I can think of is Fruit Loops).  There are also great lines such as:

I cannot have beer with most of my friends without this line being quoted. 

The Academy Awards got the awards right.  This film excels in music, costumes, makeup, special effects, and settings.  All these thing really aid in getting the audience sucked into the film.  The Hobbits are smaller then the other characters.  The building look awesome and have a ton of detail.  The orcs look great.  The music is so epic that I used to listen to it to motivate me to do things.  All of these little things really add to this movie that already has a great story and fantastic characters to make a film worth of all the nominations and wins they got.

In Conclusion, if you couldn't tell, I love this movie, but if I am honest with myself I don't really know if this movie belongs on the AFI Top 100 and I would not be surprised if it is gone when they update the list.  With that said if I made my own list (and I am) it would for sure be on it and most likely near the top.  This movie gets an A-.