A truly faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2002)

J. R. R. Tolkien spent over 10 years writing the Lord of the Rings. His attention to detail and history is what makes this particular story so compelling. It has the power of myth and human resonance behind it.
But how do you adapt such a monumental epic to the big screen? The story itself comes in three thick books, consisting of hundreds of thousands of words of detailed descriptions of middle earth, its history, its heroes and villains. How is one able to remain faithful to the intent of the author yet make the movie accessible to the widest possible audience? This is truly a conundrum that I believe Peter Jackson has solved.
His first piece of good luck was finding a production company like New Line that was willing, nay eager, to do three movies. Although Tolkien himself felt that the story was fit for one continuous book, he wisely followed the advice of his publisher and broke it up into three books. New Line and Peter Jackson followed this sage advice.
Peter Jackson, along with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, spent arduous months painstakingly sorting through the wealth of prose to find the essence of the story that could be told in the compressed format required by the big screen. Their dedication shines through in the movie itself. There are even accounts of Peter Jackson spending time before going out on the shoot to re-read the applicable chapter in the books. He did this to set in his mind Tolkien's vision before he ever said "Action!"
He did take some license with the story itself, exaggerating some roles while dimming or excluding others. But all of his decisions had to be balanced between being faithful to Tolkien's vision and producing a movie that would be worth watching by the greatest number of people. In this I believe he has kept the course.
If you have never had the pleasure of being in Middle Earth, then please, by all means, see this movie. If you are drawn under its spell, a greater wealth and depth of story lies waiting for you in the books themselves.