My Favourite Films of ALL TIME! #9
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [2001]
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchette

"You carry the fate of us all, little one."

My oh my! No favourite film list is complete without a mention of The Lord of the Rings [LOTR for short]! Technically, i'd include ALL 3 films in this post, but....since it was a trilogy, i'll actually PICK one just to be specific. There were 3 films in total, and i guess the obvious choice to go with would be the last movie, The Return of the King. That's where the story hits it's climax, where everything comes to an end, and where the battles get the biggest. Most people tend to go for that one. I love all 3 films equally, but for me, the first movie, Fellowship, is the one that i seem to revisit the most.

The overall plot for the trilogy goes something like this: An evil warlord from the past named Sauron wants to wage war against the peaceful lands of Middle Earth once again. The power to do this lies within a tiny gold ring which was forged many years ago between the races of people in Middle Earth. In order to stop Sauron's return, a group of people working for the forces of good must band together and trek their way through Middle Earth towards Mount Doom where they can throw the ring into the lava pits, destroying it forever.
In Fellowship of the Ring, we see the introduction of these characters and the beginning of their journey throughout Middle Earth. Don't think just because it's the first chapter, that it's light on the adventure, it isn't, i assure you!

I think Fellowship was the perfect mix of all 3 films. It had a nice mix of light and dark, where as The Two Towers [part 2] and Return of the King [part 3] tended to just get darker in tone as they went along. There's an innocence in the beginning of Fellowship which i really like seeing, and considering just HOW BIG this story is, the build up of introductions in Fellowship really excites me because it works as a teaser for what's coming up in the other 2 films.

There are so many great moments in Fellowship. I hadn't actually read the books when i saw this movie for the first time [i still haven't], so it was all coming at me with virgin eyes, and i was LOVING it. Once the evil Nazgul [those scary cloaked horsemen] arrive in lil' ol' Hobbiton, i was on the edge of my seat. That was topped soon after once Frodo [Elijah Wood] and the other Hobbits were confronted by the Nazgul again during an overnight sleep on a hill top with Aragorn [Viggo Mortensen]. Poor Frodo gets his little shoulder stabbed, and we also get a chance to see what the Nazgul look like WITHOUT their black hoods on. Pretty cool stuff.The stand out moment from the entire movie for me however was the Orc battle in the Mines of Moria. Shit on me!!!! what an epic fucking display! Not only do we get the Fellowship battling it out with giant Trolls, but we also have thousands of Orcs scaling pillars and walls, coming in for the kill so they can get their hands on a meaty piece of "man flesh"!!!. Just when you think it can't get any more dangerous, the Fellowship are then faced with battling the fiery BALROG [sp?] as they rush across the Bridge of Khaza Dum to safety. That creature was fucking BADASS! the whole thing was made of shadow and fire, the digital work on that thing was beautiful!

The most controversial part of this movie was a scene involving Liv Tyler's character, Arwen. Basically, her scene belonged to another character in the book, so fans were pissed off. Maybe if i was a massive fan of the books, i'd have been offended by this change in character as well, but to be honest, it's one of my favourite moments in the entire trilogy. SOMEONE had to rescue Frodo! and if the character who was supposed to do the job wasn't in the film to do it, well....hand it over to Arwen then, no biggie. She looked cool doing it anyway, but then......i have a soft spot for chics with weapons too so....ha!

It had been a LONG time since we saw a truly epic fantasy adventure film before LOTR came along. They were so big in the 80's, and that genre seemed to die out in the 90's. It was a genre i LOVED as a kid, so to see what most people consider to be the greatest fantasy books on screen after so many years of fantasy free cinema, was a real buzz for me.
These films became an annual event for a lot of people, for 3 years i anticipated the next chapter. It was a great movie experience seeing these on the big screen. They're instant classics, the types of movies that people will watch 100 years from now. They have that special magic about them. I revisit them ever few years and it's a blast watching them over and over as time goes on. I never get sick of them and i wish they were even longer than they already were.
Props to Peter Jackson for pulling off what many people thought was impossible.