20 Years of Peter Jackson’s 'Lord of the Rings'

We’ve now reached the 20th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final part of director Peter Jackson’s trilogy-length adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Two years ago, to mark the 20th anniversary of The Fellowship of the Ring, I revisited the trilogy to assess what it did well, what it got wrong, and why it endures. The look of the films, their score, and (for the most part) their casting remain impeccable and immersive. Some of the trilogy’s deviations from the source material are understandable, given the medium of film; others are less forgivable (I outlined some of them here).