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Millions
of people are excitedly awaiting the release of the
first Lord of the Rings movie - but few more so
than its director Peter Jackson.
"I
waited a long, long time for someone to make a
movie of The Lord of the Rings," says Jackson.
"Now
I am delighted and extremely honoured that I was
the person to make it."
Jackson's
movie Fellowship of the Rings is an adaptation of
the first book from fantasy writer JRR Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
But
it has long been known that Jackson made all three
books into films before releasing the first.
And,
he says, he had no problem finding enthusiasm for
such an epic project.
"The
Lord of the Rings is such a great a story and is
ultimately very cinematic. It has everything that
you could want in a movie," says the director.
"But
we also absolutely respect the book. It has
spectacle and epic scale but it is ultimately so
intimate."
Tolkien
wrote his fantasy about goblins, hobbits and dwarfs
in the mid 1950s.
Jackson
says he is confident he has found the right
approach to adaptating Tolkien's work.
Sean
Astin and Elijah Wood play hobbits Sam and
Frodo
"We
haven't gone out of our way to make this a fantasy
film - just as Tolkien didn't really think of this
as fantasy," Jackson explains.
"He
made this as a mythology for Britain. He mourned
the fact that unlike places such as Scandinavia,
Britain didn't really have an ancient mythology.
"We
have set out to try to honour that and try to make
it more an historical, rather than fantasy, film."
"Lord
of the Rings had a disadvantage for us in that
everyone knew the story. But we wanted to have as
many surprises as possible," says Jackson.
"Controlling
what the world knows about and sees from the film
has been very important to the experience of going
to see the movie in December."
What
we do know is that Fellowship of the Rings has been
filmed in Jackson's native land New Zealand.
We
also know that it stars Sir Ian McKellen, Cate
Blanchett, Ian Holm, Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood.
More
Lord
of the Rings
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