The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring Directed by Peter Jackson

Starring Elijah Wood, Sir Ian Mckellen, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortenssen. (Cert. PG,Dur. 165 mins)

There can be no more than a handful of books that are as popular around the world, and as universally thought to be un-filmable. And yet The Lord of the Rings, undoubtedly one of them, is here.

Where shall we begin the tale of how this epic fantasy journey came to be told on screen? Like all journeys surely we shall start at the beginning, so fill your packs and tighten your belts.

South African born English man, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a veteran of the First World War trenches. Much later, while head of English at Merton College, Oxford, he filled his spare time with creating a vast and detailed fantasy landscape. To the maps of Middle Earth that he drew, he added numerous races of good and evil creatures as well as men. He gave them histories, separate and intricately inter-linked, of violence and struggle and peacetime cultures. He gave each of them language and custom. His fantasy world and its stories of good versus evil were as rich as the real Northern European sagas of history that were his other passion.

Having all this laid out before him, the packing stage of his own journey perhaps, one day in 1935 he wrote: In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. That first step from his front door led to the publishing of one of the most popular books ever.

The Hobbit told the story of a small human-like creatures journey across Tolkiens Middle Earth from which he returned to his hole in the ground in the hobbit lands of The Shire, rich with dragon hoard and the bearer of a magical ring that could make the wearer invisible.

In 1954 this story, a speck in the history of Middle Earth, was added to. But when I say added to, imagine building Sydney Opera House on the back of a garden shed.

The Lord Of The Rings is a much darker trilogy, again involving the magical ring and its dark powers. At over a thousand pages, not including the maps and endless explanatory notes to accompany it, this tale of Bilbo Baggins heir, Frodo, and his journey to the one place where the ring can be destroyed, is a vast literary undertaking.

For nearly 50 years it has been a firm favourite with all kinds of readers, even voted the best book of the 20th century in a poll last year, much to the consternation of many in the literary world. In fact there are many Hobbit fans for whom the following sagas were too dark and complicated, but for millions around the globe it is a classic hiding place with Frodo and his friends as trusted companions in their lives.

Certainly, anyone who could get this successfully to the screen would be quids in. Many have tried and failed. One day in 1995 the New Zealand director Peter Jackson saw the possibilities that his own special effects company now had to make a movie like The Lord Of The Rings or even to make The Lord Of The Rings.

Much work went into obtaining the rights to it, then into finding the money. Eventually, New Line Cinema said they would fund the project but only on the condition that it was going to be three films at £90 million each! Jackson took the money and ran home to New Zealand where he all but turned the whole country into his film set in a way that Tolkien himself would surely have admired.

While early word seems to conclude that Jackson has been extremely faithful to the text, especially in the look of the creatures, he admits that of course not everything from the books will appear in his films. It simply isnt possible.

So who is in this masterpiece? Well, Frodo Baggins is young American actor Elijah Wood. His hobbit companions are Dominic Monaghan (from Brit TVs Hetty Wainthrope Investigates), Sean Astin and another Brit, Billy Boyd. Theres Gandalf the wizard, played by Sir Ian McKellen. Theres Viggo Mortenssen and Sean Bean as human warrior kings Aragorn and Boromir. Theres the elf representative, Legolas, played by Orlando Bloom and the dwarf Gimli, played by Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies, best know as Indis Egyptian mate in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Add to these Christopher Lee as the only obviously represented bad guy, and good girl elves Liv Tyler and Kate Blanchett and there you have yourself a Tolkien pie.

Now sprinkle with 21 cameras, four crews, five studios, 4.5 million feet of film, 350 different sets, 330 vehicles, 2,000 crew at some times and 1440 eggs used in one meal to feed them all 30km of specially built road, 48000 props, and youre just about ready to witness one of the biggest cinematic events of the year, decade, ever?

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring is a classic fantasy adventure, the like of which has never before been possible in motion picture and when the lights go down I for one will be quaking with excitement.