I have just finished watching the return of the King; it’s taken me about a week and a bit to get through the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy. As I said , I have the extended edition, so the whole thing is in six parts. I think that in itself adds to the experience, as it retains the episodic quality of the novel. The books take a while to get through; one reads them chapter by chapter, and you have to pause. This means that, unlike something you experience in one go from start to finish, these books become part of your life for some time. I think the films have retained that quality. Thus, Jackson has not simply made a film, but something different, something which requires extended attention – something between a film and a novel.

It is not, of course, without it’s faults. It certainly isn’t a shot for shot adaptation of Tolkien’s novel, and I disagree with some of the choices he’s made. For instance, I hate the way he’s turned the character of Gimli into little more than comic relief; there are also quite a few americanisms and modern transtextual, pop-culture references which irritate me and which I suspect Tolkien himself would have loathed. I could write at length the pros and cons of this adaptation, and part of me still resents their making, yet while I was watching these films I began to feel as I did reading the books. They made me yearn to go walking along the lanes of Cheshire again, between the fields pretending there were black riders again. Despite it’s faults, and I can see why Tolkien purists hate this film, I think peter Jackson has done a remarkable job in adapting a novel once said to be unfilmable. I’ll probably write more on this soon, but all in all, I think he deserve praise and gratitude.