Every year I give this award to a movie that
isn’t necessarily bad, and could even be good, but which is getting talked
about non-stop, is winning more awards than it deserves, and whose crazed
fans are showering it with more accolades than snowflakes in a
snowstorm.
2003 saw a movie that fits this definition to a T: a good-but-not-great film that’s been mistaken for a sign from God, made
(and is still making) piles of money, and has been called “the greatest
movie ever made” by otherwise respectable critics. It carries itself
with a hefty overdose of pomposity and seriousness when, in fact, it has
so very, very little to say.
So…what are you hoping I’ll
pick? Are you hoping I’ll fickly forget “Pulp Fiction” and “Fargo”
and jump on the “we-hate-Harvey Weinstein” bandwagon by picking “Cold
Mountain?” Not quite. Here are just a few of the winner’s
praises:
“Makes the stiff,
well-mannered drones of George Lucas’ ‘Star Wars’ epics look like stick
figures in a bad, Japanese-made Saturday-morning
cartoon…” Dave Edelstein of MSN’s Slate
“I'll be forever mad at Roger
Ebert…” A reader at
www.flickfilosopher.com, because Ebert only gave the
movie his second-highest rating.
“The most fantastical film
ever to be about, simply, what it means to be alive and in the
world…” Mary Ann Johanson,
The Flick
Filosopher herself, to which I must respond, “When, exactly,
was that? Between the deaths of Faceless Orc No. 5,614 and Faceless
Orc No. 5,615, or did this happen when I went to the bathroom for the
second time?”
So, of course my pick for the “Most Overrated
Movie of 2003”
Award is a no-brainer, and the winner is…
I know, I
know, I must be a beast, but hear me out. I admire Peter Jackson’s
ambition and technique in tackling the gargantuan “Lord of the Rings”
trilogy and had fun watching it. He gave the films years of his life
and worked so very, very hard. But it’s a shame Jackson could not
imbue the trilogy with more soul and humanity. For all the time he
spent fawning over locations, swords, stirrups, silk curtains, petticoats,
and orc makeup, the movies are simply lacking much of a human
element. There is perhaps no greater glorification of technological
consumerism than “LOTR,” a movie that replaces humanity with the costumes
you wear, the race to which you belong, the special effects that surround
you, and, if you’re in the audience, the products you buy. It’s
rather creepy to think about that the giant stamp of approval the trilogy
has gotten from awards and the public is in a way an approval of its
valuing of machinery over humanity. Should Jackson receive some sort
of prize for his years of work—like an Oscar perhaps? He has
received his prize: he’s richer than God. Let Coppola or Weir
have the little gold man.
Besides, when most people make the same
movie three times in a row, they’re usually criticized, not
praised.
In the the following month or so this site will publish a set of mini-articles examining various
aspects of the films, all trying to hide my true identity of grumbling
malcontent behind big words and intellectual gobble-dee-gook. I’ll
be making several comparisons to “Star Wars,” a more playful and endearing
pulp adventure, whose new editions have come under fire for their inferior
revisions, and whose new episodes have been condemned for lower
quality. I will also be consulting the opinions of Dr. Dave Clayton, a professor who teaches on
naval vessels (how’s that for a job!) and a friend of mine we’ll call
Nathan, who is a regular contributor
at LiveJournal’s “ArtFilm101: Film Snobs
Unite!” discussion group.
More important than
their credentials are their ideas, which are intriguing and hold
water. What I won’t be mentioning very much are J.R.R. Tolkien’s
novels. The most common defense used by “LOTR” movie apologists is
“you haven’t read the books,” as if the entire film trilogy is merely a
set of illustrations, or “you need to see the deleted scenes on the
DVD.” This is a flimsy rebuttal and can be answered quickly by
pointing out that, if after 900 days of shooting costing millions upon
millions of dollars to bring us ten hours of theatrical releases (TEN
HOURS!), you still haven’t made a complete, independent thought that can
stand by itself, then you have not succeeded. I can’t stress that
enough.
The conclusion which must be drawn from these articles is
as follows: the trilogy is too pompous, self-aggrandizing, long, and
devoid of richly sympathetic characters to be great escapism (although it
is good). It lacks the great pulp adventure’s whimsy and
light-heartedness. The trilogy is too bloodless, childish,
insubstantial, oblivious of its own implications, and, again, populated by
characters too shallow to be considered a serious film.
What we’re
left with is a shell of a movie, a ten-hour description of “if we had
something to say, this is how we’d say it.” Like the novels upon
which it was based, “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy has entered a
place where the masses reply with adoration and many of the literati
respond with rolled eyes and head-patting. There are ideas in the
films, of that there is little doubt, but the question is how much of
those ideas reach the surface, how much screen time do they get, and how
much is stifled by the repetition of people stabbing
creatures.
Here’s my email address: foxtrotsierranovember@hotmail.com. And when writing,
remember, this is film criticism, not a dogmatic battlefield. In
other words, play nice.
“The Lord of the Rings” are fine films, stirring
and adventurous, and it was a risk for New Line Cinema to plop its whole
studio behind them (although betting the farm on films that actually say
something would have been so much more daring). I gave the entire
trilogy positive reviews, and I stand by those reviews, because “Lord of
the Rings” is visually exhilarating, a production of enormous scope and
technical complexity, and populated by some likeable, if mostly one
dimensional characters.
Every year I give this award to a movie that
isn’t necessarily bad, and could even be good, but which is getting talked
about non-stop, is winning more awards than it deserves, and whose crazed
fans are showering it with more accolades than snowflakes in a
snowstorm.
I know, I
know, I must be a beast, but hear me out. I admire Peter Jackson’s
ambition and technique in tackling the gargantuan “Lord of the Rings”
trilogy and had fun watching it. He gave the films years of his life
and worked so very, very hard. But it’s a shame Jackson could not
imbue the trilogy with more soul and humanity. For all the time he
spent fawning over locations, swords, stirrups, silk curtains, petticoats,
and orc makeup, the movies are simply lacking much of a human
element. There is perhaps no greater glorification of technological
consumerism than “LOTR,” a movie that replaces humanity with the costumes
you wear, the race to which you belong, the special effects that surround
you, and, if you’re in the audience, the products you buy. It’s
rather creepy to think about that the giant stamp of approval the trilogy
has gotten from awards and the public is in a way an approval of its
valuing of machinery over humanity. Should Jackson receive some sort
of prize for his years of work—like an Oscar perhaps? He has
received his prize: he’s richer than God. Let Coppola or Weir
have the little gold man.
The conclusion which must be drawn from these articles is
as follows: the trilogy is too pompous, self-aggrandizing, long, and
devoid of richly sympathetic characters to be great escapism (although it
is good). It lacks the great pulp adventure’s whimsy and
light-heartedness. The trilogy is too bloodless, childish,
insubstantial, oblivious of its own implications, and, again, populated by
characters too shallow to be considered a serious film. 
