The Lord of The Rings: The Film and the Fantasy

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2004)

Since hitting our screens three years ago, the phenomenon that is The Lord Of The Rings has brought an enchanting tale of magic, wizardry, elves, dwarfs and hobbits to life. Four years ago, a virtually unknown Kiwi director was on the brink of something wonderful. Peter Jackson had been concentrating his efforts on The Lord Of The Rings for years and desperately needed a blessing from a major studio. That blessing came with New Line Cinema, a studio that invested $270 million as a budget for Jackson. With this budget, Jackson began a mammoth 15-month shoot in order to get the filming for all three films done in one go. The amount of editing and special effects put into the film after filming was enormous. The trilogy contains approximately 1200 special effect shots, more than any other film in history. Jackson and his co-writers, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens were aware they were making films for the hard-core Tolkein fans and tried to stay true to the books, but eventually due to timing, some scenes had to be cut considerably in order for the films pace to keep moving and the story to keep flowing. They have done an excellent job of condensing more than 500 pages of text into a script that doesn't feel choppy, uneven or rushed. The Two Towers' vast scope ranges from the snowy unspoiled peaks of Middle-earth, which was shot entirely in New Zealand, to the city of Isengard, a combination of models and computer-generated imagery. Our hero, Frodo (Elijah Wood) continues his quest in destroying the evil One Ring that his uncle passed on to him. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) departs on his quest across the plains of Middle-earth to salvage what's left of mankind; he embarks on this with Legolas the elf (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the dwarf (John Rhys-Davies). Jackson makes a relatively small part of Tolkein's book into the centrepiece of his film; the battle of Helm's Deep. A thirty-minute spectacle, where even a bit of comedy creeps in. While an impressive use of special effects gives the battle a distinct charm, Jackson does not let the computer graphics overpower the human element of what's going on. The sheer size of the sequence is awe-inspiring in particular the Orcs' raising their spears, which seem to go on for miles. Jackson has managed to stage and shoot this scene with extreme clarity. It's not that Jackson is succeeding on an epic scale here, it's that he's working on a scale most directors wouldn't dare do. Tolkein purists who didn't like the changes made in The Fellowship of the Ring will most likely be outraged at the amount of changes made in the second instalment. The Two Towers differs much more than Fellowship purely because it's stuck in the 'middle chapter' section of the trilogy. Jackson has managed, however, to keep the tone and spirit of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings throughout the second film. Jackson has used The Lord Of The Rings to re-invent fantasy for the cinema and with The Two Towers it seems very clear that we are in the midst of one of the great achievements in fantasy filmmaking and in epic filmmaking.