Header Image Source: New Line Cinema

To this day, over two decades since the first film’s release, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy remains one of the best examples of big-budget epic blockbuster filmmaking out there. I suspect that many of my generation (born in the late ’80s) might be similarly inclined, and there is undoubtedly some bias there, but the further we go down the cheap, rushed, underpaid-CGI-artist-dependent road that Hollywood finds itself on these days, the more the painstakingly meticulous and labor-of-love The Lord of the Rings ends up looking like a minor industry miracle. One look at the empty, ugly mess that is the Rings of Power makes that contrast painfully clear. The level of detail found in Jackson’s films was celebrated on Reddi the other day when it asked the question: ‘Who’s your favorite extra in the Lord of the Rings trilogy?’ You can check out the full thread here, but below are some highlights: