1. Anything Can Be Filmed Now
"Bilbo once told me his part in this tale would end... that each of us must come and go in the telling... You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on." There was a time, long ago, when some stories were considered "unfilmable" due to the things they portrayed. Maybe it's because the book described creatures that don't exist. Maybe the story is just too big, too vast. Maybe it would take too long to tell the whole story. In 2001, the world was still reeling from all the amazing movies that 1999 brought us. Flicks like The Matrix were making us question reality in more ways than one. Suddenly, we had to wonder if we could do more with this medium that mankind has been working on for the last century than we thought was possible. Lord of the Rings was seen as a story that could never be put to film for decades. Everything about it seemed diametrically opposed to a visual medium. Storytelling was non-linearReturn of the King doesn't even acknowledge Frodo and Sam's story until the second sub-booklands like Rivendell or Lothlórien were so elaborate that the only way to portray them would be to water them down or shoot around them entirely, and the market for big-budget, adult-friendly fantasy stories simply wasn't there for many years. When Peter Jackson and his team set out to create this trilogy, they wanted to find something that couldn't be done and do it. They succeeded. Die hard fans of both the books and the movies will no doubt argue until the end of time about which is better, what should or shouldn't have been added or removes, and whether the movies deserve all the praise that's been heaped on them. However, one thing is abundantly clear. This trilogy inspired a new generation of filmmakers. The notion that a story is too big is all but gone. The question isn't
if it can be shot, but
how. This is, perhaps, the greatest achievement of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Styles will change, technology will improve, and eventually even these movies will seem dated and quaint. It's bound to happen. When history looks back, though, and asks at what point cinema achieved the capacity to create anything, this series will serve as a large and important milestone. So, what do you think? Any other ways this trilogy has changed the art of film that we missed?