Peter Jackson should have made Harry Potter

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2002)

Yes, this is a review for Lord of the Rings. And the above statement will start to make sense soon enough.
Tolkien, perhaps overcome by the sheer enormity of what he created was tempted to ramble. The book began as an outlet for a new language he had invented, but ended in an epic of humungous proportions.

The book LOTR is a rambling road trip full of the most amazing incidents imaginable. He follows a million parallel stories, draws references from a zillion places and occurrences that happen simultaneously in his story.

While that in itself maybe great for the writer and the reader, it's a terror for a director. Much like IMDB itself where a zillion threads are cross-indexed to the last known source, LOTR the book had too many stories that were interesting. To pick out the main ones, to link them together with no holes, to bind them into hours (when Tolkien's time frames were in months and years) was a hard ask.
Someone I know once said to me, " If you haven't read the book, the movie's great. If you've read the book, it's brilliant."
It's rare that one gets to see such an evolved and involved production of a book. That so much respect has been accorded to the author, without pandering to every word that he has written.
Peter Jackson has been brilliant in his understanding of Tolkien, in fact, he has added dimensions to the movie that the book left unsaid. The characters have been fleshed out very well, middle earth is very believable and time frames have been handled with finesse. It is a labour of love and that adds an element of sincerity to the performances, to the sets, to the details.
And the reason why this review is more about Peter Jackson than any other aspect of the movie is that LOTR is Peter Jackson. Every bit of it has his contributions, his hard work reflected in it. He's the reason a million people are waiting a whole year to watch 'The Two Towers'.
Some famous dude, don't remember his name, also said that 'anyone can make a good Harry Potter film.' Those who've seen the movie and more importantly those who've read the book will agree, it didn't work any magic.
You watch the movies and you prefer JK Rowling versions of things. And the director doesn't seem to have contributed a whole lot more to the vision.
To translate someone's vision into real life images and pictures, to stay true to what a million people had thought it would be like, to surpass their imagination, to make it come to life takes passion. And that's a virtue Peter Jackson had plenty of. And guess Potter director Chris Columbus didn't.