ViewGuide

Created Mar 27, 2008 12:10PM PST • Edited Mar 27, 2008 12:10PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   This is, simply put, my favourite film of all time. I often struggle to separate it from the other two, but the cinematic experience, and the value of rewatching it over and over, confirm my utter devotion to it!

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   The whole cast is remarkable…making the story, and the emotion, matter to us more than everything else amazing in this movie. I’ve not seen a film where the whole cast is as remarkable since or before, and I doubt I will!!

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

   Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood and Sean Astin totally hit it out of the park here, with Viggo Mortenson and Bernard Hill (Aragorn and Theoden) almost equalling them.

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

   The three women do their best with what they have, and show that despite them being in the minority, the women of Middle Earth are just as awesome as the men!

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

   The rest of the Fellowship, and the other men, complement the leads and have their effect on the final product (the other hobbits and their journeys, Legolas and Gimli and all that entails). Without them, the film would be distinctly less impressive in my eyes.

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    I know I’m beginning to sound biased, perhaps even ridiculously so. But everything about the film is magical in regards to production; the dialogue from Tolkien hits home, the music from Howard Shore is fantastic, complementing Jackson’s vision and the story in total majesty. The effects are also fantastic (and not even too dated in comparison to films five years later!)

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Jackson hits home here; the filming, the editing and all else that he has done cements the film as a classic.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Some of the added dialogue is clunky, but then Tolkien’s prose is hard to adapt for the screen, and so the compromise is more than agreeable.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    The score is perfect in relation to the narrative; with our emotions the music peaks and troughs, epic themes lifting the scenes, and recurrent themes from the other films giving us the emotional connection that increases the kinship with the characters and their fates.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    The effects have stood the test of time, and the natural imagery gives credence to the believability of the film as a whole.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

    Really all I can say here is that the battles are all that the film has in regards to edge. The horror and fury of war, coupled with the struggle to end it, does make for intense viewing, but the story contributes most to this; we care so much about the characters that we are affected more when they face jepoardy.

17. Sex Innocent 1.1

18. Violence Brutal 2.8

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Fantasy 5.0

    In being a fantasy film, the director has never strived for realism. What is instead important is the idea of place, and in filming the locales of New Zealand, Jackson gives the story a visual complement, which, despite the fantastical narrative, grounds the film in the viewer’s eyes and sweeps them into a new world.

22. Circumstantial Fantasy 5.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0