And we’re back! This is my first of three posts on the extended editions of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy.
Going to get personal for a minute here, because this movie meant (and means) a great deal to me. My freshman year of college was really, really intense. 9/11 happened like 2 weeks after the first semester started. My college was close enough to DC that you could actually see the smoke from the Pentagon, and all the increased security around DC was omnipresent afterwards. A tornado hit campus a few weeks later, killing two students. The football team, which as a rule sucked, got stupid good and won the ACC championship and went to the Orange Bowl. The basketball team, as a rule good to start with, won the NCAA tournament in March. And in the middle of all this, The Fellowship of the Ring comes out in theatres.
High school sucked, which is something I am sure many of us can agree on. College was great for me - I made a bunch of friends who were every bit as nerdy as me, and excitement for Fellowship was one of the things we bonded over. My roommate actually paid the $50 or whatever it was to join the fanclub and get his name in the credits - I made fun of him at the time for wasting his money, but in hindsight I wish I’d done the same. For the actual release, a bunch of us got tickets for the midnight showing at the gloriously awesome Uptown Theatre in Cleveland Park.
There was a huge amount of buzz for the movie, though they kept a fairly tight lid on the visuals - the only one I remember clearly from the trailer was a distant shot of Gandalf on his wagon riding through the Shire. We certainly didn’t see the Balrog or anything like that. But man do I remember the chills I got when the opening began and you heard Cate Blanchett’s voice giving the history of the Rings.
I watched it many times since then, including most of the commentary tracks that came with the extended editions, but the last time was probably 8 or 9 years ago now. I am much more mature as a person, much more widely read, and much more knowledgeable about Tolkien.
And I have to say, on revisiting the extended edition: this is an amazing adaptation.
It’s not perfect - it has its flaws, which I’ll mention. I have my critiques. But it also feels true to the spirit of the book, and was made with love by people who clearly loved the books. Throw in some wonderful casting, a huge budget, meticulous attention to detail with costume and set design, and one of the best soundtracks in motion picture history - as a book fan, I’m thrilled with this movie.
Best parts: everything in the Shire. It all feels absolutely perfect. Everything up to the Frodo & company’s first encounter with the Black Rider is, I think, my favorite part of the entire trilogy (which is a huge change from earlier in my life, when I didn’t appreciate the quiet parts of the story as much).
The acting is great all around. The Sirs Ian (McKellan and Holm) and the Seans (Bean and Astin) are particular standouts, and there’s no one I think is bad (especially now that enough time has passed since the Matrix movies that I don’t get an Agent Smith vibe from Hugo Weaving. “Welcome to Rivendell … Mr. Anderson.”)
I’ve got two moments that stand out as favorites for me, both of which are probably somewhat unusual choices. One is Bilbo delivering the magnificent line “I don’t know half of you half as well as I would like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” The other is Boromir standing up in the Council to talk about Gondor and his father. Pay attention to the music in this scene: instead of the full orchestra, there’s a single French horn playing the Gondor theme. It’s perfect.
Speaking of Boromir - I touched on this during the read-along, but the movie did a great job with him. He’s flawed, but he’s still a good man, and particularly the extended edition makes this clear (the scene where he’s giving the Hobbits some sword lessons is a great moment for him that I wish had been left in the theatrical).
As an adaptation, there honestly isn’t a single thing that they left out of the first book that I’m really bothered by. Bombadil was an obvious choice to cut (a point which Tolkien agreed with). I regret that the Barrow-downs weren’t in the film, but they were another good thing that made sense to scrap.
Having it be 17 years between Bilbo’s party and Frodo setting out would have been so hard to explain in film form. Arwen taking the role of Glorfindel was brilliant (as I went into during the read-along).
More than anything else, this was a movie made by people who knew and loved the works of JRR Tolkien, and that love shines through.
As for my critiques, they’re more foreshadowing of things to come than anything else. Gimli the Comic Relief Dwarf has a few minor appearances (“Not the beard!”). The over-reliance on special effects starts poking in a few places, though I give Jackson & company credit for keeping most of the Legolas-being-ridiculous stuff out of the theatrical edition. I never liked the Aragorn the Reluctant King angle, but I don’t feel that they did all that much with it in the end so I’m not too fussed.
My biggest issue with the trilogy as a whole is making things impressive and grandiose for the sake of being impressive and grandiose. As I said, it’s not too bad in Fellowship, but it’s there. The scene in particular I’m thinking of is the one on the big staircase in Moria. If you listen to the director’s commentary, someone (whether it was Peter Jackson or Fran Walsh or Phillippa Boyens I can’t recall) talks about how they had this amazing set with this very dangerous looking stairway, they just had to do somewith with it. No, you actually didn’t. But more of this commentary in the next two entries.
On Monday, we’ll revisit The Two Towers.
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