Remember, Tolkien’s original trilogy of “Lord of the Rings“ novels, written during World War 2 when he was a classics professor, was conceived (and executed) as a single ongoing story. So was Jackson’s spectacular movie version of Frodo’s grand quest adventure. This film was planned from the beginning as a single work, and not in the usual “We-got-a-hit-So-let’s-make-another-one” routine that marks even some great movie trilogies like The Godfather.

That’s why I think The Lord of the Rings should ultimately be treated, in polls and elsewhere, as a single movie, and not three separate ones. Taken as a unit, the complete “Rings” is an extraordinary cinematic achievement, the contemporary equivalent of both Fritz Lang’s Nibelungen Saga and the early “Star Wars” movies. It’s made so wondrously well and does so well by its source — a pseudo-Norse saga all about plucky little hobbit Frodo Baggins’ and his heroic troupe’s great quest to return the magical ring swiped by Bilbo — that you’re never restive, never disengaged, never heavy of heart. You happily drink in all this movie’s glorious sights and sounds, even in the lengthened “extended edition” here, which runs more than 11 hours. That‘s an epic!

Here’s a part of what I said in the Chicago Tribune about The Lord of the Rings, on the release of these films separately:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (U.S.-New Zealand: Peter Jackson: 2001) Four Stars.
Hobbits and hobbit-lovers everywhere can rejoice, along with all moviegoers with a taste for fantasy, far-off kingdoms and great swashbuckling adventure stories. Peter Jackson’s movie of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, first part of a three-film adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, is everything you might want it to be — and more.
This is a movie by a filmmaker who clearly loves his source material, but not so much that he’s been stifled or intimidated. It’s a film from a major literary work made with real reverence, but also with an impudently joyous recklessness: a work of immense range and visual imagination, of rapturous beauties, hair-raising supernatural visions and awesomely spectacular battle scenes. Jackson gives us a vast landscape populated with dozens of colorful characters, played by first-rate actors in all shapes and sizes, from tiny hobbits to towering wizards. It’s a great adventure movie that’s also great fun.

The Fellowship of the Ring can be appreciated both by audiences who have read the trilogy repeatedly and those who don’t know a hobbit from a bobbit, or Tolkien’s Middle-Earth from Middletown or Middlesex. Some confirmed Tolkienites, of course, will hate the results. They’ll find the tone too coarse, lament the absence of characters like Tom Bombadil, find the battles too bloody and the book’s lyricism and elegant mock scholarship among the many casualties of translation.
They have a point, but it matters little… (Chicago Tribune, 2001)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (U.S.: New Zealand, Jackson) Four Stars.
The Two Towers takes us back to J. R. R. Tolkien’s amazing landscape of hobbits, myth and fury–and the return quest is even more wondrous than last year’s maiden cinematic voyage. This second installment in Peter Jackson’s extraordinary three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s trilogy proves as exhilarating as 2001’s epochal first part, The Fellowship of the Ring. Concentrating on the middle book of the Middle Earth saga, Jackson and company once again dazzle and delight us, fulfilling practically every expectation that either a longtime Tolkien fan or movie-going neophyte could want.

Just as in part one, Jackson has been enormously faithful to Tolkien’s original story–but also inventive and cinematically ingenious. Part two gives us the Battle of Helm’s Deep, Merry and Pippin’s adventures with Treebeard, Sam and Gollum’s trek to Mordor; The battle is one to rank with D. W. Griffith’s assault on Babylon in Intolerance — an amazing panorama of spectacle and violence.

Here is a movie once again packed to the brim with marvels, chock-full of rip-roaring action, breathtaking landscapes, intoxicating spectacle and full-blooded characters. (The slithery, hissing Andy Serkis-voiced Gollum is one of the top computer characters ever.) Here are visions to haunt your dreams and action to set your heart pounding: vast bloody battle scenes, whimsical comedy, macabre horrors and shimmering beauties–as heady a draught of fantasy and high adventure as the movies have ever given us. (Chicago Tribune, 2002)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (U.S.-New Zealand: Jackson, 2003) Four Stars
One “Ring” — finally — rules them all.

In  The Return of the King, a great mythic movie cycle gets the ending it deserves — and we can finally see this completed film trilogy for what it is: one of the major achievements of film history.

The Return of the King, and the massive 12-hour complete film that it now concludes, together become a supreme adventure fantasy epic, a staggering triumph, a movie to delight all ages, tastes and sexes — including that small part of the audience who still feel heroic fantasy with cute little hobbits, ornate language and bizarre supernatural beings is just not their cup of Tolkien tea.

Sweeping us along on a vast cinematic landscape strewn with wonders — with elves and wizards, dwarves, knights and great mythological monsters — the picture drenches us once again in spectacles and marvels. Blasted and shaken by great blazing action scenes and then becalmed by a graceful, homeward journey and resolution, Peter Jackson’s magnificent film of the J.R.R. Tolkien novels comes to a conclusion both profoundly moving and deeply satisfying.

In the end, The Lord of the Rings in toto is one of the screen’s most convincingly majestic epics. But it’s also playful, a warm adventure packed with emotion, tenderness and awe. I loved the first two episodes of the movie Ring cycle because they summoned up not just the literary traditions Tolkien mines so brilliantly, but because they shine out like some great summation of all the movie adventure classics we treasure in youth. When I left King finally, it was with real regret, finally ejected from a world I was loathe to lose. Like all great fantasies and epics, this one leaves you with the sense that its wonders are real, its dreams are palpable.

And now, through Jackson and his company — the movie’s Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, Gollum and all the rest — they are. And will be, always. (Chicago Tribune, 2003)

Tolkien’s book is one of the most beloved fantasies of 20th century literature, a classic that deserves its cult. The movie, or movies, are worthy of the book. Here, thanks to the film trilogy’s prodigious length and the vast size of the production, Tolkien’s “Rings” gets the kind of rich, full-blooded cinematic adaptation all great literature deserves: full, faithful, lush, beautifully crafted, written and cast, brilliantly done, pulsing with narrative energy, gorgeous visuals and raging excitement.

Extras: Extended editions and digital copies of all three movies (30 extra minutes for Fellowship, 45 for Two Towers, 50 for Return); Commentaries by Jackson, producers Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyen, members of the design and production/post-production teams, and by 10-16 actors, including Wood and McKellen; “Behind the Scenes” documentaries on all three movies, directed by Costa Botes; Featurettes.

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