Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power Behind Cinema's the Lord of the Rings. a Look at Hollywood's Take on Tolkien's Epic Tale

by Greg Wright, David Bruce (Foreword)

Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power Behind Cinema's The Lord of the Rings brings under one cover the dozens of essays and lectures that first began appearing on the website Hollywood Jesus in December of 2001. Since then, author Greg Wright (Tolkien in Perspective: Sifting the Gold from the Glitter, VMI 2003) has analyzed and anticipated the cinematic choices of director Peter Jackson with almost prophetic critical insight. He rightly attributes the success of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King to the power of film itself, the power of Jackson's artistry and the original power of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary masterwork - and in so doing provides an educational, entertaining and respectful look at the process of bringing a much-loved novel to the screen. Like a sculptor of words and ideas, Jackson has pared away pieces of Tolkien's fanstastic epic to reveal both the essence of Tolkien and something entirely new, something uniquely his own.

The essays in this volume are an invaluable guide to understanding both Jackson and Tolkien.

212 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2004

Reviews

[Victoria Schreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I speculated, a very interesting book. A lot of different themes were spoken about and explained - sometimes a bit too briefly perhaps. I found the author's perspective on Jackson's LOTR movies very interesting and even though I might not agree with all points, that is just the nature of the (academic) discussion. Wright certainly knows what he's talking about and the writing style was also enjoyable to read, which helped bring his point across. It was also relieving to note that while a certain level of Christian thought was present, it was not overbearing. Most uniquely Christian points were relegated to the last chapter of the book and the last paragraph, which I found very nice (there is of course nothing wrong with using Christianity or Christian theology as analysis tools, especially when a book is so steeped in Christianity as LOTR, and a strict Christian analysis of Jackson's movies could be quite interesting, it just wouldn't be interesting for me personally). Overall, a good book with highly interesting ideas that could be expanded on further.