[12] The film has attracted interest for its inclusion of characters such as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, and the Barrow-wight, featuring in a detour made by the story's Hobbit protagonists through the Old Forest, and omitted from Peter Jackson's later version of The Lord of the Rings as not furthering the plot.

[15] Sergey Shelgunov, who played Merry Brandybuck, recalled that the entire shoot spanned some nine hours, and took place in under a week.

The black-clad Ringwraiths appear, on black horses, in a flashback, followed by the story of Smeagol and how he murders his friend Deagol and turns into the monster, Gollum.

The Elf-lord Elrond convenes his council; Boromir demands that they use the Ring against the enemy, but they agree instead to form a Fellowship to take it to Mordor and destroy it where it was made, in the fires of Mount Doom.

[15] The Metro commented that the teleplay's simple effects give it a feeling more like "a theatre production than a movie, which adds to the charm".

[17] The New York Post cited a "wistful" American viewer who was wishing for a Russian "hero" to create English subtitles.

[18] The Russian REN TV noted that the Elf Legolas was played by a woman, Olga Serebryakova, daughter of the film's director.

[19] The Chicago Tribune commented that the narrator (Andrei "Dyusha" Romanov) is "a bearded man wearing oversized eyeglasses that scream 1991",[20] while the magical soft-focus effect seemed to be a smear of hair gel on the camera lens.

[21] The BBC noted that within a few days of its reappearance, the first episode had been watched over half a million times, and described the film as a "weirdly psychedelic Soviet reimagining", very unlike Jackson's later epic.

[3] It commented that the costumes looked as if they had been borrowed from theatre productions of Shakespeare or Lope de Vega, so that the wizard Gandalf resembled a knight errant, and the Elf-lord Elrond was dressed like Othello.