I saw the movie the other night. I read the Lord of the Rings book for the first time a couple of months ago in anticipation of the movie. I enjoyed the movie. The scenery and the casting was great.
Unfortunately, the story line was chunky and stilted. While I had no problem keeping up as I had read the book. My sister and cousin, who hadn't read the books, had a lot of "Huh? What just happened? Who's that? Did I just miss something?" questions. We spend oven an hour going over a lot of the back story to explain things, like the Bill comment at the entrance of the mines.
I can forgive the minor CGI glimpses and changes made to adapt the tale to film. But it is really annoying, and poor filmmaking, to skimp on both character and story development. I have read that they plan on doing both in the next film. However, a lot of people who have not read the book are going to be turned off because it wasn't done in the first movie.
My feeling is that this is one of the few movies where you have to read the book to understand it completely. As such I have two ratings, a 7/10 for those who have not read the book and a 9/10 for those that have.
My advice: Do your homework and read the book before seeing this film, you will enjoy it a lot more. |
