In 1937 a fairy tale about a reluctant hero with hairy feet was published by a tweedy English academic called JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit was an instant success – and its mighty sequel The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954. From the start, this was a project of scale – Tolkien specialised in ancient languages and had invented a number of new ones while still in his 20s. World-building came naturally to him: he produced maps, illustrations, songs and an entire folk lore as well as an enormous cast of characters. The Middle Earth sagas became his defining life work.
Adapting Tolkien’s oeuvre for the screen seems to have had a similarly all-consuming effect on the producers and director Peter Jackson. The success of the Lord of the Rings films spawned a sequel series after a ten-year gap, and the decade-spanning global endeavour with its starry cast and vast budget has become an epic story in itself.
Everything about the project is super-sized – the Hobbit trilogy cost more than half a billion dollars to make. This is partly because of Jackson’s decision to shoot in 3D and at 48 frames per second in order to increase the clarity of the images. (Normally films are shot at 24 frames per second.)
