By now I'm sure you've all read the reviews or heard the hype. Lord of the Rings is out, and it's good. Or is it? We've secretly replaced a huge fan of Lord of the Rings with Waspinator. Let's see if they notice! (note: I have not read the original novels, and have no particular fondness for hobbits. I HAVE, however, played Warcraft and have had The Hobbit read to me when I was but a small child. Please take this into account.) (additional note: Seeing as Lord of the Rings is so recent, I've been unable to find appropriate pictures to illustrate my review. Whenever possible, I've substituted inappropriate pictures.) And away we go! The movie opens with a brief (considering the movie is three odd hours long) intro, most of which I vaguely remember happening in The Hobbit. Some time in the past, three rings were made for the elves, five or so for the dwarves, and nine for the humans. These rings supposedly gave the receivers the power to govern their specific races. Not very democratic, but I applaude their dedication to representation by population. Unfortunately, the Dark Lord Sauron built a failsafe into the rings, in that he had a ring that could control them all. A strapping man of a boy, Sauron attempts to take over the rest of middle earth with his army of meltier-than-I-envisioned-them-orcs. Unfortunately, Sauron made the ill-fated decision to ask one of the humans to "Pull my finger", which resulted in the aforementioned finger being lopped off, Sauron exploding, and all the orcs falling down. The ring bounces around for a while, eventually being found in a cave by the unfortunately named Bilbo Baggins. The movie never explains why Bilbo was in the cave, so I decided he enjoyed Spelunking. Bilbo the Spelunker. Flash forward a bunch of years, to Elijah wood in full-on Huck Finn mode.
Elijah's a hobbit, which means he always goes barefoot and his height seems to vary from scene to scene. The director should've payed more attention to the Phantasm series, an excellent example of how camera angles should be used to alter height. Elijah's out doing whatever it is Hobbits do. He isn't spelunking, which somewhat debunks my earlier theory. Instead, hobbits seem to live in Teletubby land, although the hideous sunbaby was notably absent. Rabbits were few and far between, as well. Elijah's hobbity activities are soon cut short by the arrival of Gandalf the Grey.
Everybody seems to like Gandalf, although Frodo makes a point of telling him he's a shit disturber. Maybe so, but Gandalf has wheels, and everybody knows chicks love wheels.
Gandalf and Bilbo go way back, so they hang out and Gandalf wackily bonks his head on various things in Bilbo's Tubbydrome. Evidently Bilbo's old, so he's having a birthday party which all the other hobbits will attend. I hate hobbits. Anyways, Bilbo and Gandalf get really high, then Gandalf starts setting off firecrackers while Bilbo tells scary stories to children. Pillars of society they ain't. During the party, Bilbo tells everyone how much he hates them and dissapears. Gandalf meets up with him at his house, and they argue back and forth over the ring for a while. Evidently it's using its EVIL POWARS to make Bilbo fall in love with it for ITS DOWN DEVIOUS ENDS, which mostly means Bilbo calls it precious and uses it to turn invisible. Get used to the invisiblity thing, as it's evidently the only power the damn thing has.
Gandalf convinces Bilbo to leave the ring for Frodo, than gallops off to do a little researchin'. Hey, being a wizard isn't all getting high and blowing shit up. Books have to be involved too, at some point. Eventually he learns the dark secrets of the ring and returns to Teletubbyland to pawn off the responsibility of taking care of the ring to Frodo. This is probably why Gandalf has lived so long. Why do stuff when you can get others to do it? He tells Frodo to take the ring and meet him at the Prancing Pony, arguably the gayest bar I've ever heard of. Frodo manages to aquire three more stupid hobbits almost right away, which I'm fairly sure he'll learn to regret. He's soon accosted by horrible ringwraiths. Horrible primarily because they scream like girls whenever they're on screen. They gave me a headache. Meanwhile, Gandalf is off visiting some old guy. This leads to arguably the silliest fight I've ever seen. Using their powerful wizard magic, they take turns pushing each over from across the room. You haven't lived until you've seen two old men fall down repeatedly. The fight culminates with Gandalf spinning around on his head, provoking more laughter than feared awe. Eventually old guy shoots Gandalf up to the roof of the tower, where he just kinda sits around.
Things aren't much better for Frodo. He arrives at the Prancing Pony and finds it considerably more butch than its name would imply. Gandalf isn't there to meet them, so the young-looking Hobbits proceed to get drunk. Evidently the movie takes place in Italy or something. BLAH BLAH BLAH! I'm giving away the whole movie. That isn't what reviews do, is it? Why does Liv Tyler have her own tacky Burger King Chalice? She wasn't in the movie more than ten minutes. But guess who was?
AGENT SMITH!
"I need a volunteer to bring the ring to Mordor, Mr. Anderson!" Agent Smith has a weird face, and nowhere is it more evident than in Lord of the Rings. I kept hoping he'd put on some sunglasses, to no avail. Fortunately, he's gone pretty soon, to be replaced by a much more entertaining cast.
Our very own Nextmideo's favorite actor: SEAN BEAN! That's right! The Beanie Baby's in full effect! Speaking of Sean Bean, check this out:
Does he always stick his tongue out like that when he's on a horse? What's up, Sean?
You've seriously got some explaining to do, Sean.
You too, Elijah. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the film was the fact that I could SWEAR the elf guy (gimlit?) was played by Justin Timberlake.
Slap some girly hair on there, and PROVE ME WRONG! Overall, the movie was technically very good. The makeup was effective, the special effects special-tacular, and so on. The acting was also very good, for the most part. Liv Tyler was nothing like her role in Empire Records. Sean Bean didn't make any attempts at kidnapping Michael Douglas's daughter. Panties all around. My major gripe with the movie was that it didn't particularly flow all that well, and the ending left a lot to be desired. I know it's the same with the books, but I'd have appreciated a victory or SOMETHING at the end. Instead of being "Well, we still have a large quest to finish, but at least we have this minor victory!", it was "Hey, Mordor's somewhere over there - THE END". The credits came quite out of the blue. There also weren't nearly enough Ninjas. I give it
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