November 26, 2021:
Peter Jackson, perhaps the world's most successful trivializer of the genius of others, produces commercial products for eight year olds, or adults with the cultural sophistication of eight year olds. His Get Back carefully excises the discussions of Lennon's heroin addiction frequent in the source materials, along with the racist and misogynistic baiting of Ono — "flavor of the month" — throughout the sessions.
This is what he does. He makes his sources smaller. He has Viggo Mortensen asking Paul Norell if he wouldn't too much mind tagging along, there being something about an old promise; where Aragorn commands the dead. He has John Rhys-Davies hesitating to lead his nation, eventually to be tricked into it by Billy Boyd as Pippin, of all people; where Treebeard was sophisticated, insightful and determined. He has Miranda Otto, who can barely lift the weight of her prop sword, making stew, of all incongruous things; where Eowyn was utterly ferocious and determined to die. All these characters are diminished.
Fortunately Michael Lindsay-Hogg's late-sixties directorial style eschews Peter Jackson's irritating MTV-derived moving cameras. There are no helicopter shots in Get Back. That, the digitally-restored photography, and the at last properly prominent bass are the positive things about it.