This trilogy is so well-made and possesses such magnificence of spirit that it seems truly churlish to wish that it was better -- but I do. It is, nevertheless, faut de mieux, the great epic film of our time -- the embodiment of the all-but-hopeless struggle just beginning against the corporate control and perversion of all human life and an image of the inevitable victory of humane culture in that struggle. Its faults are primarily the faults of the book -- a very vague appreciation of female power, a coziness that avoids the true terror and complexity of the genuine epics that inspired it, an avalanche of dazzling invention that only rarely rises to the level of authentic enchantment. (The second film of the series, The Two Towers, is the best of the lot, if you only have time for one of them.) But its heart is in the right place, its moral sense steady and true. Mordor is on the march -- time to set the beacon fires. I'll light one if you will.
