Tom from timeout.com writes: LOTR features in Time Out London’s 101 Films of the Decade (should have placed higher… I did my best) with a word from PJ. More..
27. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
There are many cast-iron reasons why this remains many people’s pick of the ‘Rings’ trilogy: the massive wave of good-will engendered by ‘Fellowship’ meant everyone was hungry for more; director Peter Jackson had already established Middle Earth and was freed up to really let rip; people had gotten used to the alterations the filmmakers were busy making to Tolkein’s text; down and dirty second-act grit made everything feel a little more realistic than the pastoral idyll of the majority of the first film (and less plasticky and custard-coloured than the third); the first real appearance of pasty, madballs ring-bearer Gollum… All of this and more go into making ‘The Two Towers’ – here it comes! – the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ of Jackson’s colossal triptych. ALD
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
If, as some of us argued, Peter Jackson’s monumental trilogy had been treated as it was made, as a single film, the combined votes for this and ‘The Two Towers’ would easily have pushed it into the top ten, where it deserved to be. Simply as a feat of filmmaking, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is unparalleled: ten years, millions of dollars, a cast and crew of thousands, all committed to realising Jackson’s ambition to make, if not quite the best, then undoubtedly the biggest filmgoing experience of the decade. But Jackson is also a canny enough craftsman to realise that size isn’t everything, embracing the depths in Tolkein’s work, the tragic undertones of this otherwise triumphal tale – that postwar sense of loss and grief that infuses every page of the novel also lends the film an emotive resonance popcorn movies so often lack. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Cinema. TH
Peter Jackson on ‘The Lord of the Rings’: ‘There are fantastical elements, there are monsters and incredible cities and armies, things that are fantastical in nature, but we always teated it as if we were making an historical film. This really happened, these people really went through this.’
