Would you change anything about the prologue?

After all... why not?  Why shouldn't I watch another Lord of Rings video before bed.

I was there … 25 years ago. As soon as screen went black and Galadriel started whispering in elvish - literal goosebumps.

In storytelling, there is one rule to rule them all: if you're going to break a rule, break it with purpose and brilliance.

Cate Blanchet's portrayal of Galadriel was a masterclass. Graceful, powerful and wise with a dash of creepy...perfection

The way the music also helps with setting the entire tone of the movie. It is more sad and wistful than bombastic.

One reason 7m of exposition works is because it’s backed by nothing but visuals SHOWING us the background in an engaging and interesting way.   It’s a mini-movie akin to “previously on The Lord of the Rings”

One critic called the prologue 'thunderous yet blessedly comprehensible'.

What impresses the crap out of me is how compact it was. If I wrote it, it would have been 35 minutes long. As Tolkien said: "It is difficult to say anything without saying too much" but they somehow managed to do it as Tolkien fans

I’ll never forget those vast armies spilling over the screen. Truly unimaginable at the time. My personal “Star Wars” moment

“The world is changed…”

She wasn’t joking. The world was never the same again.

My absolute favorite line in the prologue, and one of my favorites in the entire trilogy, is this one:

“But something happened then that the Ring did not intend.”

Because up until that point the ominous legend of the Ring has been building and building. We watch it betray Isildur, enslave Gollum and then make its move to return to Sauron, all with growing dread. And then, out of nowhere…hope. In the form of a friendly hobbit.

It’s a reminder that evil is not all-powerful and that its will can be thwarted, especially as it grows more and more self-confident and arrogant and begins to make mistakes.

Cate Blanchet's voice together with the music score is amazing.

That prologue in the cinema was the moment where all of us knew we were witnessing something magical

Fran Walsh wrote that intro and did a fantastic job.

One technique the screen writers repeatedly used throughout the movies was to take dialogue spoken in the book by one character and then put it in the mouth of a different character. The first words of the intro, spoken by Galadriel over a black screen before the title card comes up, were spoken in the book near its end by Treebeard!

No a single being on this good earth can portray the ethereal beauty and complexity of Lady Galadriel other then the magnificent Cate Blanchet.
Absolute masterclass performance from her.

I like how at the time everyone that watched lotr was like yeah, this series is really good, this is amazing; look at the passion, the dedication.

And now, looking back, with all the years of slop in between to lend perspective, we're like, this series is unparalleled, it will never be equaled, it was magic.

And it was. It still is.

One of the biggest challenges in adapting Tolkien to film is pacing. They expertly utilized the prologue to not only give information but also give a sense of immediate urgency at the same time they set up the over-arching, long-term direction of the trilogy. This allowed a classic, slow Tolkien opening (introducing the Shire/hobbits) not to feel like it’s dragging. This is an example of putting in the extra work to both make a good movie AND respect the source material.

The two key things the prologue got right were:
1. It made the world feel ANCIENT and mysterious. This is absolutely the right way to go.
2. It made the world feel AWESOME with the sheer quality of the battle scenes at Mount Doom.

The theme of “much that once was is lost” is also reflected perfectly in the spectacular scene later at the Argonath. It’s not essential for the plot, yet it’s vital for feeling the age and weight of the world. It has the same sense as “Ozymandias” by Shelley.