Lord of the Rings Review (no/few spoilers for content)

I went to see Lord of the Rings last night, the film which I've been looking forward to for 2 days (manically) 2 years (enthusiastically) and the whole of my life (in a wistful way).

This, in itself was a problem. There was no way this film was going to be completely perfect, and I'd hyped it up so much in my head that God himself would have been a dissapointment.

And I'd read too much about it too. Not that it spoiled plot, but knowing how the large/small size bits with hobbits/humans was done had me watching for it, which dragged me out of it.

And while I haven't read the book for 10 years (at least), but obviously large chunks were still familliar with me, but I knew the plot had been changed, so I kept thinking "That wasn't how I remember it."

All of these things stopped me getting into the first 45 minutes of the film (the Hobbiton section), which didn't grab me as much anyway. But as soon as Bilbo put the Ring was first put on, I was lost. The mood changed for the darker, and I was just swept away by it.

I want to put more in here about how the style swept me away, or the fantastic action sequences or the amazing special effects, or the wonderful acting. But I won't, because providing examples would definitely be spoiler fodder.

I had forgotten how depressing large amounts of the story are, with everything going downhill at various points, so this was a massive bonus for me. I'm now wracking my brains trying to remember what I have to look forward to next year.

Oh, and if you're the kind of person who, knowing how it all happens, is likely to not be as affected by the bad shit going down, then I recommend taking along someone to grip your arm whenever the evil music starts, be emotionally affected by the death of (deleted for spoiler reasons) and jump in all the right places. Trust me, it definitely helps set the mood.

Oh, and the person on the other side of Erin was a 60 year old woman, who was in tears for large chunks of the film. That's how good it is.

We're not all geeks anymore (completely unsurprising fact #13446)

I saw several newspaper articles earlier this week about a survey saying that internet users had stopped being geeks, and were in fact ordinary people (if slightly smarter and richer than average). Apparently this was because internet users were changing.

Now, this may just be me, but surely with any technology, when it first appears the users will be technophiles who don't mind spending their money on cool toys rather than beer? Then, later on, as the technology goes mass market, this audience will be swamped by the vastly more prevalent ordinary people, and thus it'll no longer be the case that the group is made up of glasses-wearing social misfits.

Similarly, if you performed a stufy of LOTR fans a year ago and compare it to a study a year from now, I suspect that the statistics would change considerably. Not because the people changed, but because the two groups would not be comprised of the same people.

Popularity goes a long way

It appears that remarkably swiftly Fellowship of The Ring has become the best film of all time. At least according to the IMDB. The IMDB's ratings take into account the total number of ratings (so that if only 10 people in total vote for a film, it can never be rated as highly as a film getting a lower average, but 16,000 voters), but despite having only 7000 votes as compared to The Godfather's 44000, it's pushed it out of the top spot. With more votes pouring in over the next few weeks, I'll be intrigued to see how this one plays out.