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Monday, 24 October 2011

Lord Of The Rings:- 10 Years on




By Euan ' Trepo Brandybuck' Campbell





Over the past week or so, I've taken the time to watch the extended editions of Lord Of the Rings on Blu Ray, in celebration of the upcoming tenth anniversary of the release of 'The Fellowship of the ring'.

Its hard to believe that ten years have past. In movie terms we've seen some great moments and some truly terrible ones. We've seen a whole generation of movies pass with Harry Potter ( I'll be covering those in a few weeks time), and the star wars prequels have come and gone (ok so episode one was '99 but the others were in the noughties).


Reflecting back, it makes me appreciate once again how good LOTR actually is.


For the first time in history it was decided to film all three movies together, back to back. Some say this was crazy, I say this was inspired.



From the very first moment I was gripped. The back story of the ring of power gave Weta a chance to flaunt their magic early on, and from that moment they never looked back.


From here Peter Jackson took us on a mesmerising, sweeping adventure full of everything you could possibly hope for in movies.


Now the cynics would say that all they did was convert books to movies, but they did so much more.

As an avid fantasy fiction reader, I can admit that reading Lord Of the Rings is no pleasure cruise. Its long, and a lot of it is slow moving, and often the detail was overwhelming, so to convert this epic trilogy into a movie friendly story was a momentous challenge.


First and foremost, for me casting is everything. With the right cast you can accomplish anything, and Lord Of the rings combined a wealth of up and coming youngsters (Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom) with a few carefully selected veterans (Sir Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, John Rhys-Davies) in key places to hold it all together.


Ok some of the performances in patches were not what you could call quality , but over-all the standard was high. None so more than what Viggo Mortensen displayed as Aragorn.



Aragorn is the key to the whole thing in my opinion, if they got him wrong then the whole thing would have crumbled, but fortunately after a last minute decision by Jackson and Co, they got their man.

Viggo's performance was intense yet subtle, fierce yet Tender, and he displayed a leadership that carried the rest of the cast on this epic journey.


The trilogy is much too long to do a synapsis, so I won't bore you with one, but to be honest if you're reading this article now, then you'll have seen the the movies yourselves so doing one would be pointless.


LOTR brought epic battles and quiet emotion. It brought comedy and fear, Love and anger.

It took the time to develop the characters in a way that gave a connection to its audience, and it delivered stunning set pieces back to back.

I for one will admit to getting emotional at the Grey Havens, watching the movies make me feel like I have been on the journey myself, and that is a rare quality in modern day cinema.



LOTR also brought with it the first succesful use of motion capture technology, which has already benifitted some of the best film-makers of our generation.

The Creature Gollum is magnificent achievment, and displays a truly incredible performance from And Serkis, which I believe should have gotten recognition from the Academy (I'll touch on this more in a future article).


So here we are 10 years later. The Lord Of The Rings does not look dated in anyway. It is still as moving and breathtaking as it was the first time I saw it, and Iv no doubt I will feel this way every time I watch it in the years to come.



'I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil'



















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