The Lord of the Rings trilogy
These films are perhaps the greatest movies of the last ten years! They are probably the most perfect example of filmmaking of our time. They had everything, perfect casting, brilliant acting. Majestic locations but above all, a brilliant storyline, this is in large part because they are adapted from books and so the story was already there, but if you had the wrong set of writers who didn’t have an appreciation for the words of J.R.R Tolkein, it could have gone very wrong. Writing and directing is probably the hardest part because it take an extraordinary amount of patience and attention to detail to get it as close to the books as possible.
The Lord of the Rings is classed as a literary classic, so it was the right thing to have experts as a part of the filmmaking process. This will appease the fans and scholars, because the right amount of care and effort will be poured into the production of the movies- and it showed!
The decision on who to cast for each role was a stroke of pure genius as they had the perfect mixture of veteran actors like: Sir Ian Mckellen, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, Cate Blanchette, Hugo Weaving, John Rhys- Davies, Sean Bean and Viggo Mortensen and the new kids on the block like Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan and Orlando Bloom. But the true heart of the films were the two lead hobbits, Frodo and Sam played by Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, their friendship and loyalty to each other made you fall in love with these characters.
The idea of casting Liv Tyler as the Elvish princess was a bit if a risk, as I have seen her previous movies and I was a bit nervous- no offence intended. But she brought her A- game and through her acting she portrayed the loneliness and the inner conflict whether or not to stay with Aragorn or to be with her people. And the dedication in her to learn Elvish was greatly appreciated!
Viggo Mortensen was a last minute add on, but I tell you, through his performance it looks as though he was born to play Aragorn. And to think Stuart Townsend was the initial choice. No offence to him, but to play this type of role it always had to be someone a little older and who had the ability to convey all those enduring years- and that was always going to be Viggo!
Sean Bean was another great choice as he has the look of an old style warrior and he has been in shows like Sharpe, so we knew he had the ability to play noble and heroic Boromir. He also has that angst ridden look that has had him pegged as a villain in many films such as: Patriot Games , Goldeneye and Don’t Say a Word. His portrayal of Boromir had a touch of everything but most of all he makes the audience see how torn his character really is, and that he’s not really a villain but a hero with some problems.
The casting director should be applauded, each actor was perfect for the role and why I here you say, because many of them are classically trained. We should be thankful for the fact that New Line Cinema even financed these film, because let’s face it, it did have some risks. Peter Jackson in all his wisdom decided to do all three films back to back. This could have backfired because if the first film tanked than they would have wasted the studio’s money. But back then the bankers were not in charge of the films and you had the choice whether or not to take these risks. Unlike now, where if you can’t guarantee a success, it won’t get made.
And the whole way they measure success is wrong, I don’t know about everyone else, but success to me is if 10 years have gone by and people still hold your film in high esteem and it is still talked about, I hate going to the cinema, I find the people noisy and I can’t seem to watch the film without getting disturbed, so I wait till the DVD comes out so that I can watch it in peace. So by measuring a success of a film purely on the number of tickets sold is not entirely accurate.
Nowadays the most “ successful film” is the one willing to pay the most for marketing and PR, and any great movies become background noise to that monstrosity of a film, forget they fact that it will probably be forgotten within a month.
I fear that no one will take a risk and that films Like The Lord of the Ring will become a thing of the past, how sad is this fact, how can we sit back and deny future generations true genius and let them be hypnotised into watching things like Twishite!
I weep for the future!
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