If there was a risk that paid off greatly in Hollywood’s favor, it was Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. There was a particular dark period of summer movies between the late 90s and the early 2000s; after the boom of CGI became a usable tool, it was overused drastically, which resulted in a lot of half-baked movies where the effects were the stars of the movie instead of the story and characters. While it had slowly started to build itself up again with movies like Men in Black, Lord of the Rings was a daring challenge to take during this period; not only was it a fantasy film (which weren’t very successful financially), but it was a fantasy trilogy based on the famous book written by J.R.R. Tolkien, meaning that it had a fan-base which it would inevitably have to live up to. With all this pressure it had on it, it proves how resilient and impressive it was that Peter Jackson turned out a trilogy as massive as this one, starting off with Fellowship of the Ring. Set in Middle Earth, the dark lord Sauron seeks the One Ring, a ring which has the ability to corrupt the good and further power evil. The ring is in the possession of a hobbit named Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) and he is tasked with taking the ring to Mount Doom in order to have it destroyed. Needing assistance, he is joined with a group that is later called the Fellowship; this includes the wise wizard, Gandalf (played by Ian McKellen), Frodo’s best friend Sam (played by Sean Austin), twin brothers Merry and Pippin (played by Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd), a ranger named Aragorn (played by Viggo Mortensen), a human prince named Boromir (played by Sean Bean) a dwarf named Gimli (played by John Rhys Davies) and an elf named Legolas (played by Orlando Bloom). Together, the team set out to reach Mount Doom and destroy the ring, all the while avoiding the gaze of Sauron and his wizard servant Saruman (played by Christopher Lee).

For a tale as massive and biblical in scale as The Lord of the Rings, it would have required something equally as massive in terms of scale and presentation. Peter Jackson was a good choice for directing this as he is famously known for dealing with giant budgeted movies and managed to squeeze in a good deal to direct three movies instead of having the story mashed into one film. The story of Lord of the Rings is almost impossible to fill into a movie with it stretching out beyond three films in the first place, which resulted in a lot of material being cut from the books in order to make the narrative more flowing and less padded with background information. While purist Tolkien fans weren’t happy with this, the movie doesn’t seem to be packed with anything that wastes time or unintentionally slows down its pacing, which still results in a long movie, but one that keeps people invested without being hounded by bucket loads of lore. As an opening movie goes, it does a good job highlighting the pros and cons that would be frequent throughout the whole trilogy. The movie has a pretty epic opening start (which was a big change from movies at that time period), they go to a frequent amount of areas yet don’t feel like they’re rushing through without telling a story, and the ending appropriately feels like a part one of a story (like it’s a piece cut off from an overall picture). There are some issues with some of the area, like the opening place (The Shire) needed to be a lot more calm and subdued in nature to offset the frantic chaotic environments they were going to go to later, instead its equally as energetic. One of the biggest problems with the movie is its hints of modernism; while most of the time, the dialogue feels appropriate to the world they create and the mood is perfectly set and not broken, there’s often lines of levity that not only break the mood, but break their world as well for feeling unnatural and pandering in the wrong way.

One of the best elements of this franchise is in its casting. Whether someone is a fan of the movies or not, no one can deny that every single actor was picked perfectly for their roles. All of the choices are perfect for what the role requires of them and every one of them does a very good job in their roles. Elijah Wood is perfect as Frodo, Ian McKellen has made Gandalf one of his most famous roles, Christopher Lee as the villainous Saruman is spot on; with his demanding low-toned voice fitting wonderfully with the character. Not all of the characters feel like fully realized characters but there’s usually a trade-off in that area. Merry and Pippin, for example, feel more like movie-created characters than real people, but they’re very well realized movie characters as they’re likeable to be around and stand out from between the other. Characters like Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir are definitely more like real people than the others though they aren’t as fleshed out as the others. The usage of Sauron as a villain is also a little shaky; while his presence can be felt throughout the movie, its not quite as strong as it should feel. Also, his design during the intro part feels a bit too over-the-top for someone who should be this monovalent lord of darkness.

One of the main differences that this movie took compared to others of its time is that its effects were not its star focus, rather its world, its characters and its story was. This kept the movie from feeling like a gimmick that would fail and instead something that was meant to be taken seriously. The effects for the movie are still pretty impressive, mainly because they were paired with realistic environments as well. Sometimes some of battles show their age and a particular scene with Gollum looks especially bad, but otherwise they look pretty nice. Most of the size differences created for the smaller characters compared to the human-sized characters looks believable because they got actual little people to fill in for doubles whenever their backs are to the screen. The environments are also incredibly beautiful to look at, with the movie mainly being shot in New Zealand which has a lot of locations that feel hand-picked out of a medieval environment. The lush green areas are incredibly earthy and peaceful, the sets of Hobbiton look very impressive, and a lot of the new locations they go to create the atmosphere they want to create perfectly, with places like Rivendell and Lothlorien being good example of both elements. The score by Howard Shore has become infamous as one of the most famous musical scores of all time and its hard not to understand why, it’s a great theme that captures the excitable yet epic quality to an adventure within this kind of environment. The music overall has a wonderfully naturalistic and atmospheric quality to it, where its able to capture a scene or location’s essence and personality through its music. It leads to a lot of pleasant moments of music, both in epic moments, quiet moments and in emotional moments. The movie does unfortunately have a lot of awful camera work in the opening act of the movie. While it wants away during the last two thirds and the later movies, the first half of this movie has a lot of needless close-up shots that feel intrusive and awkward, they ruin the moments they’re in and don’t work at all.

Lord of the Rings was a monumental movie for its time as well as one for cinema history. It was the first fantasy film to not only work in a period of bad movies but be great as a trilogy (something that very rarely happened with movies that wanted to tell its story across more than one movie). For a first movie, it gets a lot of things right; it feels like it captures an adequate representation of the book while still adapting it to work effectively as a movie, the casting is perfect which lead to a lot of likeable characters, the effects are impressive for the time, the music is wonderful, it has a lot of nice atmosphere, and it gets people wanting to see more. True, the movie doesn’t capture its environment perfectly with its often-pandering dialogue and awkward dated cinematography, but overall, it’s a nice movie to check out and showed that Lord of the Rings was going to stay around for a while. Against all odds where most fantasy epics have failed, Lord of the Rings proved that it would truly be the one to rule them all.