The Lord Of The Rings Will Never Be Equalled

Don’t forget that Jackson and Tolkien portrayed strong women WITHOUT trampling the strong male characters. Eowyn, Galadriel, and Arwen are examples of noble, beautiful, feminine, and respected characters.

“Hollywood used to depict heroic actions. Now they can only see heroic identities.” Well stated.

2000: "I knew Tolkien personally, I'm here to carefully, respectfully depict his work" 2020: "never heard of him, I'm here to fix his work"

“Evil cannot create anything new, but can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.” -Tolkien

"My friends, you bow to no one." Not only does that make me cry every time, but it succinctly sums up the entire LOTR trilogy. Truly the apex of filmmaking.

You know what’s stood out to me recently regarding the LOTR trilogy versus many modern movies and TV shows? How dirty the cast is while filming. Viggo Mortensen would live in his costume, go fishing in it, wearing it in and looking like a man who has been in the bush his whole life. Sean Bean would hike up the mountains in full costume to film early in the morning because he was afraid of flying. So when they got to filming, the actors were covered in grit and sweat, and you could see their blood was pumping in the way a long camping trip will do to you. It looked, it felt, so real.

Having Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee on set was almost like having source material consultants.

Part of the reason Tolkien's story worked was because it's themes are timeless: finding strength in unexpected places, men who are not afraid to cry over the death of a friend, people with old quarrels learning that they have things in common, and the price of war no matter how necessary it is.

If I recall correctly Viggo Mortensen hadn't even read the book himself until short before his casting and only got into it through his son. But as we all know he gave his whole heart for these movies and not only for playing his own role. His dedication to play Aragorn and help produce the trilogy, influencing and motivating others in the process, strikes me as one of the most inspiring acts in Hollywood history. He really felt responsible for the whole project and carried the personality of Aragorn as a leader and caretaker on camera as well as off. There is countless scenes of him in the making of footage, where he discusses scene arrangements, choreographies and such with other crew members. He even bought his horse from the owner company after finishing the movies and bought a second one for one of the riding supervisors, who fell in love with said horse, but couldn't afford it. His wholesome character and massive talent made him one of my favorite actors of all time. That's not to diminish the merits of everyone else involved, but Mortensen always stood out to me in that regard.

Just went to the 25th anniversary showing at the theater yesterday. It still holds up. Even my 14 year old was getting into it.