Hunt for Gollum reviews

Written By: mike on August 25, 2010 No Comment

The idea of the “fan film” is about as old as the concept of film itself. Ever since civilians have had access to a camera and hours of disposable time, people have been recreating Indiana Jones and pitting Batman against the Predator. However, in recent years, the strides in visual effects and the use of the internet as a tool to bring one’s art to the masses has made the art of the fan film more easily produced and more easily seen by millions. As most fan films are produced on a shoestring budget, one that actually manages to look good tends to shine pretty well.
One of these diamonds in the rough is Chris Bouchard’s The Hunt for Gollum, a film-made prequel to the world-famous Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Set between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, the story starts in Bree as Gandalf assigns Aragorn to capture the titular creature Gollum to see what he knows about the Ring. Based on some of the appendices of the original Return of the King book by J.R.R Tolkien, the movie visualizes Aragorn’s quest for the wretched creature. The cast does a fair enough job. Patrick O’Connor’s Gandalf is appropriately “old” and “wise” while Gareth Brough manages to mimic Andy Serkis’s Gollum voice as a demonic Donald Duck rather well. The Orcs manage to pull off “argumentative” and “savage” as well as the Jackson Orcs do.
The story itself is simple but sufficient to get involved in. That’s fine as it’s mostly a device to get Aragorn into fights with satisfactorily designed Orcs and Nazgul. Though Gollum occupies the title, this movie really belongs to the Ranger of the North as he hunts the little monster. Adrian Webster does a decent job in the role of the future King of Gondor. Despite being the clear star of the film, Aragorn have very little lines though this is mostly due to the fact that he has very few people to talk to. Outside of Gandalf and another Ranger, Aragorn spends most of the story either alone or facing beings who would sooner bite off his face than converse with him.
Rather, Webster’s role in this film is to show us the hunter and warrior Viggo Mortensen portrayed in Jackson’s trilogy more than the orator. Bouchard appropriately recalls Aragorn’s tracking skills from The Two Towers in one scene as he places ear to the ground to determine the patterns of both Gollum and the nearby Orcs. His fighting style, on the other hand, seems to borrow a tad from Christopher Nolan’s Batman. One scene in particular sees him dispatch an Orc before its comrade in arms can even turn around to spot him. In another scene, Aragorn fights off a whole group of Orcs with shaky action camera work where we can barely see the hero as he plows through nameless evil minions. It works thematically for Batman but seems slightly off for Lord of the Rings. Aragorn also suffers from some of the more general action hero tropes: it takes him roughly about as much effort to fell half a dozen Orcs as it does one or two. That being said, the fact that I’m applying traditional film standards to a fan film just might show how high the quality of this film is.
Made on a budget of less than £3,000, the movie looks quite professional and well-crafted. To say it looks like a Peter Jackson production would by hyperbolic, but it does have an impressive look to it. It certainly is on par with some of the better effects you would see on a Sci-Fi TV show which, considering the source of the film, is quite the accomplishment. The biggest visual obstacle is Gollum himself since Bouchard clearly doesn’t have Weta to reproduce one of the most intricate CGI creatures in film history. Instead, Bouchard utilizes the same technique Spielberg did over thirty years to work around a malfunctioning shark: hide it. Gollum is rarely seen in this movie at all, observed mostly from far away shots or from behind. Bouchard is very careful to show his face only when it means something. This is a good choice on Bouchard’s part since any more of the creature would probably open the reality of this creature on such a small budget to more scrutiny than the makers of this film are likely to want.
In working around the budget constraints, Bouchard either intentionally or unintentionally builds upon the film’s biggest strength: atmosphere. With Gollum relegated to the shadows, the character becomes mythic as it did in Jackson’s first installment: a ghost that’s here one minute and gone the next. Atmosphere is at the soul of this film. Bouchard does a masterful job using the environment to tell the story. Long and dark forests intersperse with dimly lit cottages and bars give us all we need to see as viewers to fill in the blanks of this world. Bouchard manages to depict his film’s landscape as vaster than it is with a few shots of the winding green valleys and jagged rock quarries that allows the viewer to assume Jackson’s world lives on in this film even without millions of dollars. Above all else, atmosphere is the star here.
The Hunt for Gollum is by no means a perfect work of art, but its ability to transcend the world of cheaply made costumes and stilted dialogue that is most fan films is impressive. Bouchard manages to present this movie in such a way as to allow the viewer to see Jackson’s world without the purse strings of a major studio. Fans of the books or the film trilogy would probably enjoy this a great deal. Fans of film production, once they realize this was made on about a quarter of the Blair Witch Project’s budget will probably be in a bit of awe as well. It is truly one of the best fan films ever made.