TM2YC said:
Howard Shore's score is so beautiful, his themes sing out strongly from each other. Is there anybody who couldn't hum the Shire theme right now?
I distinctly remember thinking, the first time after seeing
Fellowship, that the movie was pretty great, but it was a pity there wasn't a main musical motif tying it all together, only for someone to assure me that there very much was. Guess I was just too mind-scrambled by the epic-ness of my one theatrical viewing to retain it!
TM2YC said:
So 19-years later, just about every shot still holds up, where as the more recent mostly CG Hobbit trilogy didn't even hold up when it was first released.
Agreed. I think there's one shot of the
Fellowship walking past some CG mountaintop ruins during a montage where the digital stonework has a wonky, pixelated look, but that's about it. Well, that and
the car, of course. (Which I certainly didn't notice in my one theatrical viewing.)
Actually, I
do have one honest-to-goodness quibble with the movie. I only read the books once, but I distinctly recall a moment in the woods at the end when Frodo dons the Ring, looks all around his sweeping vantage point, and sees orcs (or a kind of vision of orcs) on the march in all directions, like ants swarming a picnic. It would only have needed half a minute or so, but could have been a beautiful addition.
Anyhow, I've said it before, but this is the one film of the trilogy where I prefer the extended cut. With so much to set up, the theatrical version feels under-developed and a bit too action-heavy; I saw it once more several years after the trilogy came out, and it simply didn't feel right. For
TTT and
RotK, however, the extended cuts just drag the pacing down, diffuse too much tension, and vary the tone to excess.
Personal note: I went to a boarding school in the fall of 2002, and, to prepare for
TTT, organized a Saturday night screening of someone's
Fellowship dvd in our main assembly hall, getting a faculty sponsor to loosely supervise our use of the digital projector, which seemed like a super-expensive piece of
precious equipment at the time. Despite the lack of theater-quality seats, it was a magical night of geeky... well,
fellowship.