The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Directed by Peter Jackson
Young hobbit Frodo Baggins, after inheriting a mysterious ring from his uncle Bilbo, must leave his home in order to keep it from falling into the hands of its evil creator. Along the way, a fellowship is formed to protect the ringbearer and make sure that the ring arrives at its final destination: Mt. Doom, the only place where it can be destroyed.
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What critics say influenced The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Fans who remember The Empire Strikes Back (1980) ending with many of its issues unsolved -- and feeling the anguish of having to wait three more years for the sequel -- will know how it feels.
Take the best things about “Conan the Barbarian”, “Braveheart” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, filter them through the manic energy Peter Jackson brought to his “Dead-Alive”, match it with resources usually only accessible to the likes of Lucas and Spielberg, and you’ve got some of the most breath-taking set pieces ever crafted.
A giant spidery-like sea serpent, a monster who looks like a cross between King Kong and Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and sinister horsemen on fiery black steeds are among amazing sights that practically jump off the screen in 3D-like presentation.
Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Fellowship of the Ring is unprecedented in its class; it is the uncontestable Citizen Kane of its genre, and may well be the first of one of the most noteworthy film series of all time.
Still, The Fellowship of the Ring is more than an auspicious start to Jackson's trilogy: it is a cure-all for a year full of dismal mainstream cinema, a reinvigoration of the flagging fantasy genre, and an integrated vision of otherworldliness on the order of The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner, or 2001: A Space Odyssey .
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A chaotic run-in with a cave troll, for instance, leads instantly into the approach of a phalanx of Orcs, who retreat to make way for an enormous, horrifying Balrog (a distant but discernible progeny of the Id Monster in 1956's Forbidden Planet).
You could even throw in more weighty epics like Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" or David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia."
If "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was the "Citizen Kane" of martial arts films, "The Lord of the Rings" does the same thing for the fantasy quest genre.
Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Fellowship of the Ring is unprecedented in its class; it is the uncontestable Citizen Kane of its genre, and may well be the first of one of the most noteworthy film series of all time.
Peter Jackson, the man who helmed all three LOTR films, was a master director with his earlier work, including the bloody spectacular, Heavenly Creatures, and the just plain bloody, Dead Alive.
But in the Tolkien spirit, New Line has wisely entrusted the Rings to a hobbit, choosing an unlikely leader in director Peter Jackson, whose previous credits include the micro-budget slapstick horror films Bad Taste and Dead Alive, and the masterful art film Heavenly Creatures.
And as gory as it is, it's still nothing compared to Jackson's Dead Alive.
Mr. Jackson gets more feeling into "Fellowship" than he did with his previous films, like "Heavenly Creatures" and the bracing shock comedy "Dead Alive" and "The Frighteners" (which contained milder elements from "Dead Alive").
Jackson's approach, honed by all those Harryhausen tributes in Dead Alive and Claymation revelries in Heavenly Creatures, couldn't be more different.
From his hypnotic true-crime account "Heavenly Creatures" to his hyper-horror flick "Dead Alive" (arguably the goriest ever made), the New Zealand-born filmmaker has a way of taking fantasy-heavy source material and granting it art-house validity.
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Unlike the painstakingly re-created carpets and china patterns of James Cameron’s “Titanic,” obsessive details that just get swallowed up in the blur of the movie’s hubris anyway, these cloak pins are a bit of visual music to go along with the story.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the Fellowship that eventually forms around Frodo's personal quest emanates a tougher, more nuanced example of tense coalition than did Spielberg's all-male cadre in Saving Private Ryan , Ridley Scott's in Black Hawk Down , or even Martin Scorsese's in The Last Temptation of Christ.