In this grand finale to the iconic trilogy, more props and costumes were built than what the other two movies offered, with more CGI utilized in ways never seen before. The most beautiful setting in this movie, or any of the three movies, is Minas Tirith, with its exterior made mostly out of a miniature set piece, and scenic designs that are of the finest artistic craftsmanship. Settings like that, along with the epic musical score, help make the film feel every bit as huge as Middle Earth should be. While Gollum returns as viciously cunning as ever, more digital creatures make a proper debut to showcase all that CGI had the potential for.

​The Mûmakil set the stage for one of the most complex war battles in cinema’s entire history, while Shelob the giant spider is animated in a way like no other CGI creature up until that point. Even the Army of the Dead, which wasn’t even necessary for the plot in the first place, was present to run the extra mile in showcasing how much could be done in combining digital effects with innovative costume design. It’s so stunning how every single scene in this final movie of the trilogy is its own visual effects showcase, proving why The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, along with its two predecessors, are perhaps the most influential films of the 2000s.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
3 hr. 21 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

​The next adaptation in J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy could not possibly top what the first one did, right? Bzzt, wrong! The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in fact introduced even more new visual effects techniques that left a permanent effect on blockbuster movies. More enormous set pieces were built on location, such as Rohan, Isengard, and Helm’s Deep, while many more sets were built completely from scratch inside a soundstage, such as the Dead Marshes. Plus, a massive portion of the third act’s runtime is taken up by a battle at Helm’s Deep, which fully utilized the tools at its disposal: the heavy rainfall, the special makeup effects, the complex camera movements in the air, the miniature sets, the practical fight choreography, it’s mesmerizing to imagine the production challenges posed within every single frame of this sequence.

​Plus, Gollum is one of the first-ever instances of motion capture technology in film, and it could never have worked without Andy Serkis’ performance behind the mocap dots to bring so much humanity into the role. Furthermore, the CGI Ents move like no other digital creation had looked before, especially during the scene where they attack Isengard together. The computerized effects may have been the accomplishment most celebrated in this trilogy, but it’s ultimately more noteworthy how a massive project such as this could have possibly been completed in the first place.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
2 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

For so long, everyone thought adapting the entire Lord of the Rings book series into live-action motion pictures was impossible, yet Peter Jackson did it, hooking audiences in with this first of the epic trilogy. Under his direction, an immense plethora of previously established special effects techniques were expanded upon, and those new techniques went on to inspire other movie studios with their tentpole blockbusters. Today, these originally out-of-the-box approaches to combining digital and practical effects are still at work in the industry and are still growing fast.

​Among those techniques included the miniature sets surrounded by digital backgrounds, yet the biggest achievement was the use of forced perspective to make the actors playing the Hobbits appear tiny when next to the other human characters. To sell the illusion, duplicate versions of the same set were built, with one at a smaller scale when filming shots of the regular-sized human characters. Even then, the extra mile was run: digital shots combined Ian McKellen and Ian Holm into the same frame and had them exchange props with one another, extras with giant animatronic hands passed by the actors, and dummies were used when the Hobbit actors’ faces didn’t have to be seen. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring set the stage for what the trilogy did for movies—now any filmmaker can feel comfortable with adapting anything.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
2 hr. 58 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.