A few days ago on a subreddit called /r/OscarsDeathrace, I wrote a post declaring that I was going to watch every Academy Award nominee ever. In the comments of this post, I was told that I should do write-ups on the movies that I watch. In order to make that commenter happy, and hopefully to entertain my readers, I created a new blog so I can do exactly that. Just as a warning though, I’ve never been great at structure so while I’m at least going to be mentioning and commenting on every category these movies were nominated in, I may get a bit…rambly at points. Just a warning.

Ready?

Ok.

Go!

I’m starting by watching through the nominees of the 74th Academy Awards which cover movies that were released from 2001-2002 (and a couple arguably in 2000 but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it). I’ve watched five of the nominees already (Shrek, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Monsters. Inc, Ghost World and this) but I’ve decided to start with this write-up because despite it having the most nominations of any movie represented at this ceremony, it is also the movie with the most obvious strengths and weaknesses out of all that I’ve seen.

That’s probably because it’s roughly 4 hours long, not counting the 20 minutes of credits at the end. That is a lot of material to work with and therefore a lot of material to potentially get very right or very wrong. Basically, this movie’s length finally gave me enough to work with for my first post!

And The Nominations Are:

Best Cinematography: This movie is flippin’ gorgeous. The camera gets up close and personal when it needs to allow you to feel what the characters are feeling or see what they are seeing but also knows when to pull back and frame them against a mountain for a sense of scope and scale. It has aged incredibly well and having seen none of the other nominees in this category yet, I must say this was a very well deserved win for Fellowship.

Best Visual Effects: Let me say upfront that the CGI in this movie hasn’t aged very well. That’s not to say that it’s bad but I could definitely tell when I was looking at a creature created on a computer. It’s not Raimi’s Spiderman dated but it’s also not Jurassic Park good.

That being said, this won visual effects for a reason. The CGI creatures are definitely very well designed and very well animated but what really pushed the effects over the edge into greatness is the practical use of in-camera effects to create the sense of scope and scale that I was talking about earlier. I never once questioned that Gandalf towered over Frodo or that the Mines of Moria was built for Dwarves. Fellowship earned its award by balancing visual and computer effects incredibly well to the point where it is honestly hard at times to realize not only that an effect is practical instead of CGI but that it’s even an effect at all.

Sound Mixing: Fine I guess? I honestly don’t have much to say here. It was nominated in this category but I’m not sure that I remember much about the individual sounds…except for the whispers of the ring. That’s haunting and super cool.

EDIT: I’ve been informed that’s Sound Editing and not Sound Mixing so I guess it was entirely forgettable.

Best Original Song: I’m biased on this one. I hate Enya and I love the song that won (If I Didn’t Have You from Monsters Inc.). If I (attempt to) take bias out of the equation, however, this song is….objectively very pretty and also pretty dull. This isn’t a song that I could picture listening to on their own unless they’re listening to the LOTR soundtrack and they’re too lazy to skip this song. Sorry Enya, this just wasn’t your year.

Best Original Score: Howard Shore, however, created one of the few scores to give me chills while I was listening to it. It is grand, it is bombastic and it is balls to the wall epic in a way that is impossible to describe. Just do me a favor and click the link to listen to it. If it does the same to you that it did to me, it will wash over you and 1h7 will have passed before you even realize it. The rest of the soundtrack, unfortunately, is Enya.

Best Makeup: Again, I don’t have much to say about the Makeup but that’s probably why it won for Best Makeup. I bought the elves as elves and the hobbitses as hobbitses because of the subtle touches introduced by the makeup team. I never really thought about the fact that the pointy ears and hairy hands weren’t natural. Bravo, makeup team…although you lose points for giving John Rhys-Davies eczema.

Best Film Editing: This film was definitely edited. Moving on.

Ok, ok, that’s not entirely fair. I’m sure it was nominated for Best Editing for a reason, I just didn’t notice it. In fact, I feel like entire chunks could have been edited out (a couple of which were for the Theatrical release) and the movie would have been come out much tighter and easier to follow. As it stands, there are very noticeable lulls and bizarre tone shifts (sometimes unintentional) because the movie was too worried about including as much as possible.

I can understand why it lost this award.

Best Costume Design: I love Gandalf’s Hat. I just do. That being said, this movie’s costumes aren’t anything really special, especially if you watch a lot of fantasy movies. There’s a lot of robes, flowy dresses and itchy pants. It’s nothing that would stand out in a movie like this. Nothing bad but nothing special.

I know that every costume supposedly has a backstory according to the commentary and that supposedly no two costumes are alike but from a casual viewer’s perspective, I didn’t notice any of that. Sorry!

Best Art Direction: This category would later become Best Production Design. Having not seen Moulin Rouge!, I have no idea how Fellowship lost out on this award. The Shire is so flippin’ cool as are The Mines of Moria as is Saruman’s Tower as is every other single location in the movie that’s not The Prancing Pony or a noticeable green screen. Until proven otherwise, I’m going to say that Fellowship was snubbed.

Best Supporting Actor(Ian McKellen as Gandalf): Having not seen Iris, I have no idea how Sir Ian lost out on this award. Woah, Deja Vu. He’s just as grandiose as the environments and scores surrounding him and, apart from the late great Christopher Lee, the only actor in the movie who I would consider truly amazing (sorry Orlando Bloom fans). A 10/10 performance.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I feel like this is going to be my most controversial opinion.

Adapted Screenplay is the main reason I decided on watching the Extended Editon instead of the Theatrical Release. If I’m going to rate a movie, I’m going to rate the entire movie as it was intended to be watched. Therefore, having watched the ENTIRE movie instead of the movie minus 30 minutes to make it barely more palatable for theater-going audiences, I can definitely say with 100% certainty that this did not deserve this award at all. Maybe the theatrical edition deserved it but there are so many unnecessary additions to the extended edition that keep dragging the movie to a crawl (looking at you, most of Moria). The movie’s biggest weakness is that it adapted the source material too well. Shrek and Ghost World are definitely easier sits and both took huge creative liberties while still keeping a consistent tone to the source material. I don’t know what my feelings would be if it were down to just Fellowship and the movie that won A Beautiful Mind, but this definitely didn’t deserve the award over the other nominees I’ve seen.

Best Director(Peter Jackson): I’m not completely sure what to say here. If it wasn’t for the work of this man, the amazing visual effects, truly epic score or decision to focus on the ring as a character instead of a prop might not have happened. However, if it wasn’t for this man, we also would have gotten a complete story instead of three films so I can’t really tell if he did a great job as a director without having seen all three. This movie’s directed well, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like giving him an award for the first third of a movie. The film feels incomplete and therefore, my analysis of it shall remain incomplete.

Best Picture: This category put me in the same predicament as the last one. Fellowship is a great movie but it’s not Best Picture worthy because it’s only the first third of what I consider the complete Best Picture nominee. The Academy would later go on to award Best Picture to The Return of the King, the final movie in the trilogy so I can only truly give my opinions on the story and movie as a whole once I get to that point. At this point, however, it definitely didn’t deserve Best Picture anymore than the first book alone deserves Best Novel.

Final Thoughts: Fellowship of the Ring is an incredibly long movie that is mostly fun and very technically impressive. It has earned its reputation and fanbase quite well but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is far too long and that it suffers from inconsistent pacing and acting. It’s a great movie, just far from a perfect one.

If you took the time to read this entire post, thanks! 😀 If you liked it, let me know how I can fix future entries and be sure to look out for more! If you didn’t, well, sorry for wasting your time.

Later, dudes!