10. Great Story
Peter Jackson and his screenwriting partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh had to overcome one massive obstacle before they could even think of the finer details of their project. How do you take a novel over a thousand pages long, steeped in an incredibly dense mythology, and compress it down to its bare essentials in a way that can be filmed on screen? Somehow, they delivered and for the most part the movies are very faithful to the source material, changing a few things along the way but mostly just leaving out superfluous elements. Jackson managed to touch on the broader history of Middle Earth while developing characters and handling multiple narratives in a way that never goes too fast or too slow. He did so by trimming the fat off Tolkien's story and grounding the films in as much realism as possible, ensuring that while there are wizards, dragons and monsters, what you see on screen feels real. The Lord of the Rings celebrates honor, friendship, love, and virtue while also getting epic battle scenes and a classic tale of good versus evil. The novel was a brilliant example of good old fashioned fantasy storytelling and it's adapted to the screen magnificently.