100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #50: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)

Directed by Peter Jackson. Based on the novels by JRR Tolkien. Starring Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis

It is hard to overstate the immense cinematic achievement of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Peter Jackson managed to revolutionize the movie industry through the vast scope of these films and his innovative VFX techniques while at the same time hewing closely to the best traditions of the previous century of Hollywood cinema. If that wasn’t enough, Jackson’s films are about as faithful to Tolkien’s classic novels as a cinematic adaptation could be (a few peccadillos notwithstanding). They are widely acclaimed as the best films of the twenty-first century, influencing all blockbuster cinema which came after (for good and for ill) and influencing the taste of thousands of young cinephiles, myself included.

Although many, many things have been and could be said about The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I’d like to focus on three topics for this review: first, the merits of a faithful film adaptation of a classic novel; second, the amazing technical innovation of these films; and finally, how these films express truth, goodness, and beauty in a truly transcendental way.