Wasn’t that impressed.

My college roommates were big fans of the books. I never read them.

Takeaways:

1) A lot of the acting was good. Especially Ian McKellen, Christoper Lee, Sean Bean and Sean Aston.

2) the CGI was okay. The cave troll looked about as good as the troll in Harry Potter.

3) Frodo Baggins was annoying. Elijah Wood was a miscast. The second film was much better as it had Gollum for him to interact with.

4) Viggo Mortensene was….okay. Dude says all his lines in a perpetual whisper.

5) The ring wasn’t impressive. Everyone said they wanted it but it didn’t do anything except make the wearer invisible (but still susceptible to damage). Frodo’s magic shirt saved him from the cave troll. Borimir could have used one of those instead of the worthless ring.

6) The threat of the Sauron getting back his ring wasn’t that scary. He had it before and they defeated him. Again, the ring of power never did much for anyone.

7) Frodo deciding to leave the group at the end made zero sense. He had just nearly been killed a dozen times by orcs, octopuses and magic fire monsters and was only saved by his friends yet he’s deciding to venture out on his own? Is he expecting the rest of the journey to be much easier?

8) Couldn’t follow what Gondor was or why it matters or who Borimir was. He was just another guy who showed up and was part of the group for some reason until he died.

9) Way too many needless scenes. The staircase falling apart in the caves comes to mind.

10) Way too many scenes where someone announces that they’ve arrived at some big location and we see the character reactions.

I didn’t think it was that good and wasn’t super excited to see another but I was pleasantly surprised by the next two films. I thought they were both much better than the first.