Review of The Lord of the Rings (1978) by Sol H — 13 Apr 2011

It has a certain charm to it, mostly from the (admittedly cheap) animation -some of which is actually rather lovely in terms of characterisation. It does a reasonable job of telling the story of The Lord of the Rings, it's just that, let's face it: that story is a load of overblown, bloated nonsense. I can't even begin to go into how completely ball-sap it is. It really is the biggest pile of horse-shit. It's the most ridiculous, overly elaborate and complex set-up for endless sequences of people walking.

You could make the entire trilogy into one, nicely condensed 1 1/2 hour movie if you cut out all of the pointless episodic encounters with bad guys. Have the exposition-heavy intro, have them leave on their quest, they get chased and fight things for 40 minutes instead of 8 hours and then they throw the ring in the fire, end of film. The time thing there, is of course more of a complaint with Peter Jackson's films, but even so. This is 2 hours and 10 minutes only for no ending. A story without an ending is not a story, it's a waste of time. I don't care if they intended to make sequels, films should stand alone.

And even in spite of that, it's a bad film because the overall plot is such a boring concept. Why can these rings rule the entire fucking world? If Sauron made the ring in the first place, my guess is that he used his own magical energy to forge it. Why put your own lifeblood into a ring when it flows through you? Why not just take over the world with your own magical abilities? Dickhead.

Oh, wait no, he made the ring to control all those good rings that were floating about. Where the fuck did those come from? Who made those? Why did they put their good magic into a fucking ring?

Remember in The Hobbit when the ring was just a nice plot device that turned Bilbo invisible instead of being all this fucking bollocks about consuming his soul?

I'm sure there are answers to all of my questions, but if anything, that proves my point. Those answers will be even more ridiculously convoluted. Fuck Lord of the Rings. Simple as that.

4/10.