The Lord of the Rings is the living embodiment of the word epic, so any earnest adaptation must be able to translate that sense of scale and wonder captured so effortlessly on the page. Packed with fantastical creatures and funny Welsh-sounding names, Jackson crafted a saga that can be appreciated equally by those who worship or ignore Tolkien's series. With the exception of Ralph Bakshi's ambitious but uneven animated film, Jackson was the only other director who believed that such a project could be carried out without producing a total embarrassment. In the early 2000s, Peter Jackson accomplished the impossible and successfully adapted Tolkien's books into cinematic form. Split into three volumes and published over the course of a year, Frodo's journey to Mordor feels timeless. Inaugurated with a short fantasy novel called The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien created literary gold with 1954's The Lord of the Rings.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that people have been entranced by the world of Middle-earth since the mid-1930s.

War of the ring playthrough