#10: The Lord of the Rings (2001 - 2003)

If there's one thing we are going to remember this decade by, it's going to be the chart of the American blockbuster: from its heights as a Best Picture winner, to its fall after LOTR 3 won the top prize in 2003. Think about it, the last time an epic, big budget Hollywood movie won Best Picture was LOTR; since then, its been smaller budget pictures all around, with little box office.

I honor LOTR not because it simply won Best Picture, but because the film is also an amazing feat in filmmaking in general. This movie defined Super-deluxe DVDs, with each one detailing hours and hours of exhausting production. I myself only delved into the Fellowship's special features, but anyone who wants to get a very good idea of what kind of heart and suffering it takes to make a movie, this would be a good one to watch (also Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse).

LOTR details the struggles of young Hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood) to destroy the Ring of Power before the evil Sauron can fully posses it and return to domination. He is aided by Gandalf the Grey/White (Ian McKellen), Sam (Sean Astin), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), among a wide host of other characters. After Part One, the movies separate into a sprawling saga of Frodo's quest to destroy the ring and Aragorn's quest to less interesting but still awesome and exciting things.

Probably one of the most impressive things about this movie is how wrong it could have gone; most movies dealing with ogres, orcs, elves, and the like are really lame and stupid, and the fantasy genre really ever breaking the mold is unheard of. Yet this movie rose head and shoulders above the rest, and though it is not without its flaws (Liv Tyler, for one, and the six endings of part 3), it still is a masterpiece of filmmaking.

For instance, watching the movies again last year, I was struck by how detailed and precise Peter Jackson, the director, was in keeping scale and frame of reference in mind. Though the Hobbits and Dwarf are played by actors who are average in height, camera trickery and little people are cleverly used to make the "normal" people seem like giants. Of course, now that you know to watch for it you realize the little people in the wide shots really aren't the actors, but it still works.

That, and the movie's perfection of the motion capture technology for the character of Gollum: even six years later, he seems as lifelike and convincing as when he first hit that screen to take the precious. There very few moments in history of true revolution in technology, but this was one, and it convinced James Cameron that computers were advanced enough for him to make Avatar.

The effects work because Jackson doesn't let them dominate the scenery, he uses it to enhance them. This is counter to George Lucas, who instead created most of the sets in his last two Star Wars pics digitally, on Green Screen. The majesty of the mountains, fields, and forests of New Zealand could not be replicated by a computer, and by seamlessly blending special effects with locations, the way they SHOULD be used, he creates a convincing Middle Earth.

And though the movie is long, and I myself have criticized it for its repeated battles, it can't be denied that the films, as a whole, together, are one solid, magnificent piece of filmmaking. True vision like that is hard to find in movies today.