Well, as all good Tolkien geeks have done at some point in the last week I have made my pilgrimage to the mega-plex to view the latest incarnation of Peter Jackson's homage to our dearly departed author's work. I've read reviews from all over the Internet with few quibbles, but little in the way of criticism (except for the ending). This will not be one of those reviews.
Peter Jackson has done a good job translating The Lord of the Rings to the big screen. However, as is always the case (except perhaps in the case of Michael Creighton, who should just write in screenplay format and get it over with) the translation from novel to movie imposes some loss. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, and the Return of the King in particular, the loss is too great to bear. The root problem here is that the story is too big. There just isn't time to develop characters in the movie format.
Tolkien took a LONG time moving his plot. He took his time developing Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, the other members of the Fellowship. We cared about Frodo. We understood the terrible toll the ring took on him. We cared about Sam, the true hero of the story that kept moving Frodo and the ring towards Mt. Doom. We cared about the others because Tolkien let us spend time with them, let us see a bit of who they were. Jackson just doesn't have time to do this. In the end I stopped caring about the characters, except for a few masterful performances from Sean Bean, Ian McKellan, Andy Serkis. Yes, that's correct I have more empathy by the end of this epic for Boromir, who dies in the first movie than I do for Frodo. Bean could actually; you know emote, unlike so much of the cast in this ultimately unsatisfying treatment.
Far too much attention is paid to the action and effects in this series than the frail condition of it's characters. Perhaps Steven Sondheim would have been a better choice for the series, he understands setting a slow pace and letting us see the emotions of the actors. Jackson is more of a general who could muster the forces and assault the shooting schedule. It's the difference between the Magnificent Seven and Saving Private Ryan. Jackson has made the Magnificent Nine, when Tolkien wrote Saving Private Frodo.
Jackson's epic battle scenes do little to actually advance our connection with the characters. We don't see the fear, the concern, the barbarity of the condition of battle that Spielberg so masterfully conveyed in the first twenty minutes of Private Ryan. Yes, Jackson's battles are bigger, there's more stuff, but they're emotionally barren landscapes where we watch Fell Beasts pitch red-shirted Gondorians about like so many toys. There's no connection to these people. Even when we do have the chance to make some sort of connection, with Pippin, or Theoden, Jackson punctuates the moment then moves on so quickly as to render the brief interlude of emotion little more than an afterthought.
Jackson's handling of the Frodo/Sam plot line is a bit better. Still, in reading the books I felt the days that Frodo and Sam spent in Mordor crawling over the ruined landscape. Jackson's Mordor looks to be hardly the size of Rhode Island, if that. Calling it vast would be a gross overstatement. The feeling of scale just isn't there.
The torment of Frodo likewise has been short shifted in favor of an accelerated run time. Where a greater actor such as McKellen or Bean (Hell even Serkis under all that CG glop) could emote their way into our hearts and let us experience their pain through their eyes, Elijah Wood comes off more like a squeaky clean college kid playing a junkie. Unlike Bill Clinton I don't feel Frodo's pain.
This is perhaps the nail in the coffin for me. I could believe Wood as Frodo in Fellowship, but he's not able to pull off the transformation from happy-go-lucky Hobbit to strung out ring junkie. Wood reaches his range about 3/4 of the way through The Two Towers and stays in 4th gear on Jackson's autobahn.
One wonders if Jackson was hitting deadline issues as he filmed this final installment of the Lord of the Rings. It all seems rushed, yet it's insufferably long. There isn't time for character. It's nothing more than a journey from one CG created effect to the next. It's sad really, this movie has been so hyped and so well received, yet it misses the essence of the book in so many ways. Now it will be seen as the definitive interpretation of Tolkien's work. In the end it lessens the book, cheapens it. That seems to be the modus operendi of the day though, faster, better, cheaper. You only get to pick two adjectives. It saddens me that Jackson picked the ends and not the middle.