We saw The Fellowship of the Ring Thursday night and I am delighted with it. The movie meets or exceeds my expectations in almost every way. Visually, it was uncannily like the way I always imagined things in my head (especially Hobbiton, Bree, the Mines of Moria, and Mordor) and I totally believed the Hobbits were littler than the Men and Elves, forgetting all about the photo magic that went on there after the first few scenes. I am impressed as hell with the script. I can't imagine trying to compress such an enormous amount of information (much of it told in flashbacks or in long, expository lumps in the books) into a movie script, but it works incredibly well. And I was relatively happy with the casting, though for my money Sean Bean should have played Aragorn and Viggo Mortensen should have played Boromir. Bean is a far more powerful, effective actor. He brought a tremendous poignancy to the role, and embodied the flawed heroic qualities which define Boromir, and I could have believed in him as the king in exile. Viggo, not so much.
I'm not wild about whoever plays Meriadoc, and Sean Astin as Sam is okay with me though nothing like I pictured the character (for one thing, he's too much Frodo's equal), and Elijah Woods pretty much looks like a Hobbit even before the prosthetic ears and feet although his accent comes and goes a bit, but whoever cast Scottish actor Billy Boyd as Pippin is a genius. He's quite a scene stealer. I was also impressed with Orlando Bloom as he had the right young/old/feral/merry look of Legolas the Elf. Ian Holm was a wonderful Bilbo. And of course Christopher Lee chewed the hell out of the scenery as Saruman. He was tremendous, an absolute force of nature.
On the quibbling side: The elves are mostly blonde? Cate Blanchett is a beautiful woman but she was much too young to play Galadriel. And you will never convince me that Liv Tyler had any place in that movie, certainly not as the preternaturally beautiful Arwen Undomiel (who has no role whatsoever in the books except to be as above and marry the hero -- she doesn't turn up in the flesh until the end of the last book and even then she's basically a cipher). I see why it was convenient to have one person instead of a host of Elf lords rescue Frodo at the Fords of Bruinen and yes, I understand why someone might like to flesh out the love interest of Aragorn but for crying out loud, Arwen should not have an overbite. I thought Tyler was badly miscast, though now that I think about it she is sort of Viggo's weight in the acting stakes.
There are lots, and lots, and LOTS of closeups of Frodo's face, and you know what I was thinking each time? Not about his situation, or the actor's acting, or any of that. I was thinking, "What beautiful, perfect skin he has. My god, his skin is flawless." This is possibly not what the director had in mind, but I couldn't think of anything else. Oh, to be 20 again.
I am sorry to say the theater we were in, #8 at the Century Cinema 16 in Mountain View, had lousy sound. It interfered with some dialogue, and added an unfortunate set of "special sound effects" to otherwise mostly silent scenes. Michael Rawdon had the same experience in the same theater so we suspect the print itself is flawed. Also, the music was a wee bit heavy on the Celtic ookiness that Enya specializes in, and I distinctly heard some John Williams-ish threadbare heroic theme music in minor chords, but otherwise I ignored the score as I usually do until the end credits run.
I very much look forward to the other two movies in this trilogy.
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