And so we come to it at last - the great sequel of our time. Concluding his monumentally successful and well-received run of the trilogy, Peter Jackson certainly goes out with a bang with his final offering. The Return of the King, winner of an astounding eleven Academy Awards, is his most ambitious and impressive cinematic offering yet. There is a reason that each Lord of the Rings film is in the top 20 of IMDb’s top 250 highest rated films with the third installment even breaking into the top 10 to rub shoulders with the likes of Pulp Fiction and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and that reason is simply that the trilogy is no less than a monumental and historical cinematic endeavour of unimaginably ambitious and daring scale executed faultlessly by a team of dedicated and devoted enthusiasts. There is little to fault in this mammoth achievement; Return of the King is, without question, one of the greatest films ever made.

Diving straight back into the juicy narrative, Jackson doesn’t leave us dying with anticipation in The Two Towers. Although deemed the worst of the trilogy, The Two Towers, with respect to its difficult position as the middle film, is possibly the best. To add some perspective, The Fellowship of the Ring had the easier charge of establishing the story and each of its characters. The Return of the King has the yet easier task of depicting the narrative’s natural, epic climax. But The Two Towers is lumped as the piggy in the middle; undoubtedly poised to fall dangerously into the realm of monotonous inter-bridges, Jackson superbly and masterfully molds this intermediate undertaking into a three hour masterpiece of stellar proportions. The narrative reaches a stunning climax in the final hour that feels natural and appropriate – nothing is forced or contrived. Furthermore, the scope of the story widens substantially, and nobody thought that was possible after the truly grand marathon that was the establishing installment. No longer are we confined to the quest and characters of the fellowship alone; trickily branching out across Middle Earth, the audience is lavished with multiple excursions to Rohan, Isengard, Fangorn forest and Osgiliath. We accompany pivotal characters on three colossal journeys, each as satisfying as the last. Nobody thought that The Fellowship of the Ring could be topped – but it just might have been.

Little can be said about Peter Jackson’s trilogy of Tolkien-based fantasy epics that hasn’t already been heartily exclaimed since the release of the first installment almost ten years ago, but the impending release of The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug requires a little reflection on just why Peter Jackson can do no wrong. J.R.R Tolkien, when writing various endeavours into his fantasy realm, fashioned an entire universe of characters, mythologies, worlds and even languages with his Middle Earth and, as reflected by the sheer scale of Jackson’s adaptations, the relatively unknown director has managed to capture and (fairly) accurately portray Middle Earth as if it were pulled from the very imaginations of the readers themselves. Though some would argue otherwise, Jackson has succeeded in going above and beyond in translating the depth, wonder and vision of Tolkien’s beloved trilogy from the pages of the book to the grandeur of the screen. Once deemed ‘unfilmable’, Peter Jackson and his vast team of talented associates have accomplished the impossible with The Lord of the Rings.