Lord of the Rings, The: Book I - The Return of the Shadow

Review by JasonN — February 14, 2009 @ 9:47 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by Varilion — February 14, 2009 @ 1:24 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by TMBTM — February 7, 2009 @ 10:11 pm

5/5 to me. But I think it is because the Tolkien angle fits good for this first part (the suspens about what happened to Gandalf and the nice cliffhanger, for exemple)
I wonder how will look the following edits…
Technicaly I did not notice anything wrong. Great job!

Review by Sunarep — March 8, 2009 @ 1:51 pm

A very good edit, this is what fanediting is all about, taking us to a familiar movie but with an all new spin,

The flow of the edit is very good, the progress of the story from happy Shire, to Gandalf uncovering the truth (great place to put in the flashback) to Bree, Nazgul and so on and so forth, the only tiny problem might be the Gollum part, because we as the audience don’t know about Gollum – perhaps it would be possible to rearrange a few of Gandalf’s lines and add Gollum finding the ring and Bilbo getting it to the Isildur story? – just a thought

I am really looking forward to the rest.

10/10

Review by spelledaren — February 6, 2009 @ 2:16 pm

Nice, but not perfect. The new intro works, but later references to Gollum for example become weird, because we know nothing about him. I wasn’t too fond of Gandalf’s ride through the Shire. I was going to buy it, but then there came another scene with focus on him speaking, and still with no words. I prefer Bilbo’s sillyness.

About removing the black rider you say that “Frodo and Sam don’t know as of yet that they are being hunted. In order to follow the book, neither should the audience.” But isn’t this just a smokescreen for the fact that it gets hard to cut from the hilltop to the field, because of the sudden shifts in music it would require? I mean, it’s obvious that they are hunted, you have already shown us all the other Nazgul scenes.

I think I noticed two sound cuts (apart from knowing that they are there), one was in Bree when they are nearing the inn, and the other was when the Nazgul enters the inn. Just some unevenness.

Now that I’ve gotten through that: excellent editing choices! This edit does most, but not everything, that I would want to do myself. The edited scene at the Ford is especially good, a great improvment over the original.

A minor point: if you are trying to follow the books as closely as possible, why does Gandalf show off fireworks to the children? I mean, it’s a good scene, but it wouldn’t be too hard to remove.

I’m giving this 4 out of 5. I will try to watch the rest, but from TTT it gets increasingly difficult to keep the movie true to the books…we will see how it goes! Good work, keep it up!

Update Sep 29, 2012.

Added ratings for the categories.