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DVD: Hold your money, Ring fans
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 15, 2002
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (widescreen version)
[Photo: New Line Cinema]
Cate Blanchett, left, plays Galadriel and Elijah Wood is Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
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New Line Home Entertainment has a cash cow in the barn with The Lord of the Rings, milking every possible dollar. Last week's DVD release of the first film in director Peter Jackson's trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, is just a rehearsal for opening your wallet when a more expansive, expensive four-disc set arrives in November.
The studio knows plenty of Hobbit-heads will do it. The Ring trilogy books written by J.R.R. Tolkien built an audience through the decades, and anticipation for the film versions runs beyond cult interest and into the realm of obsession. Amazingly, Ring fans have stuffed the Internet Movie Database's electronic ballot box to push The Fellowship of the Ring into the No. 4 position in a survey of the top 250 films of all time. The evil wizard Saruman hath no fury like a fantasy geek kept waiting.
New Line can package a suitable two-disc package now featuring bonus material that the targeted audience already saw (and maybe memorized) on the Sci-Fi Channel, in bookstore screenings and on the film's official Internet site. Toss in a few plugs for the next episode, The Two Towers, a video game and, of course, the Platinum Series Extended Edition DVD (with optional gift pack) coming in three months. The result is a short-changed, redundant collection that will be obsolete soon, anyway.
New Line didn't provide reviewers with DVD copies until The Fellowship of the Ring hit store shelves, a move that seemed intended to prevent video piracy. But it also allowed sales to mount before anyone could be warned that rental might be a better option since a grander version is coming soon.
The Fellowship of the Ring is certainly an impressive sensory achievement, reflected by its Academy Awards for visual effects, makeup, cinematography and Howard Shore's musical score. But it still feels like a glorified video game with the heroes required to vanquish or escape creatures before proceeding to the next level of their quest. Avid readers of Tolkien's books can sort out all the cumbersome names for characters and locales, filling in the emotional blanks, while others remain confused.
Call me old-fashioned, but movies should entertain and inform on their own, without viewers being required to "study" for hours in advance to catch every nuance and bridge those dramatic gaps. Outsiders like me who never read Tolkien are the unwashed masses to be lorded over by the insiders. How can we be so shallow not to regard Jackson's films -- even the ones that haven't been released -- as the greatest cinematic efforts ever?
Those fans can better appreciate Jackson's 10-minute sneak peek at The Two Towers, especially the behind-the-scenes explanation of the filmmaker's stop-motion and computer-generated Gollum character, briefly seen in episode one. They'll hum along with Enya's music video of the Oscar-nominated song May It Be. They won't question why that previewed video game named for the second movie appears based on the first. They'll pine for a commentary track from Jackson that won't show up until November (just in time to hype The Two Towers theatrical release), then pay richly to hear it. That super-duper version might even thrill the unwashed. This one is just a ringer.
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