And Return of the King is five billion years long. It’s a good reminder that there’s a powerful narrative reason why the rule ‘ never split the party’ exists. Two Towers has that epic battle, of course, but it also has three of its characters endlessly running across rolling hills, three of its characters marching begrudgingly through grey and depressing landscape, and three of its characters arguing with a giant tree. There’s a strong argument to be made that Fellowship is the best of the three. The three films are, in short, a triumph of filmmaking. The acting is by and large superb, and the cinematography great, even occasionally outright brilliant. The world is huge, comprehensive and compelling. Every detail of the films is meticulously planned and executed, from the hand-embroidered stitching on the characters’ costumes to the soot-stains on Bilbo’s ceilings. The movies were filmed back to back, over the course of more than a year, while Jackson also essentially built New Zealand’s small (but mighty) special effects and props company, Weta Workshop, into the powerhouse of special and practical effects it is today. Sets were built early and left to weather for months, even years, before filming ever began. A quick recap of the trilogy’s origin story: Jackson, his wife and his writing partner spent years in pre-production, breaking down the plots and mapping out how the three films would work independently of each other as well as how they’d function as a complete trilogy.
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