Fellowship 5 - Plus Expenses
The 2000s are effectively the last time Hollywood truly gave a shit. Back then CGI was new enough that it could only be used sparingly, the last generation of physical effects workers were still spry enough to work and franchises weren't the guaranteed cash cows they are now. Even the most polished movies of the 2000s were still marked with an undeniable humanity, including Fellowship.
There are shots in Fellowship — including this one — that truly look like ass. There are countless moments in this trilogy when actors slip, swords wobble, costumes fall off and smoke goes the wrong way. There are entire special effect sequences that look like they were made in Photoshop by someone who *just* learned what Photoshop was. Hell, in one Shire scene there's literally a dude driving a car in the background.
My point is this: not only are all these mistakes forgivable, but they add to the work tremendously. They reveal to the audience that this is in fact the work of human beings: people who came together to make a work of art, people who tried their best and sometimes failed anyway. These mistakes are archaeological evidence that someone somewhere really cared.
I'm not going to spend this blog ranting about the failures of modern movies — entirely because I'm not really a movie buff, I mostly grew up on videogames and YouTube — but I will spend it singing the praises of the incredibly brilliant and incredibly fallible people who made this trilogy what it was.