Not very far into the manuscript of fellow academic JRR Tolkien’s magnum opus, CS Lewis was heard to exclaim ‘Not another fucking elf!!’ Undoubtedly, those among the population who are perplexed by The Lord Of The Ring’s place in popular literature, not to mention its consistent placing as the Book of the 20th century whenever and wherever such polls are commissioned, will be feeling something similar now that the whole world seems to have gone hobbit since the movie version opened before Christmas.

The Fellowship Of The Ring – as most of humanity knows – follows the young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) after his inheritance of a magic ring from his uncle Bilbo (Ian Holm). The ring, as it happens, is no ordinary piece of jewellery, but the One Ring, an object of absolute power that could allow Sauron, the Dark Lord, to enslave all the peoples of Middle-earth. Frodo is joined by a loyal fellowship of men and hobbits, as well as Gandalf the wizard (Ian McKellen), Legolas the elf (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli the dwarf (John Rhys Davies). Together, they journey towards the Crack of Doom where the Ring was first forged and where it must be destroyed. However, they face external evils in the form of Sauron’s army of Orcs and internal dissension brought on by the immense corrupting power of the Ring.

As one might expect, entire story strands and chracters have been given the chop, and more attention is paid to Frodo’s central journey. Equally, other parts have been added: Liv Tyler’s character, the elfin princess Arwen, has been expanded from a brief appearance in the book to form a romantic subplot involving Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen). Also, a new composite character Lurtz has been created to marshall the Uruk-hai Orc troops. Purists may not be happy about such changes, but given the length of the work in question, they were fairly essential. Besides, when one considers the director Peter Jackson’s devotion to Tolkien, coupled with his CV to date (the surreal and fantastical Heavenly Creatures, as well as the inventive no-budget splatterfest Braindead), the object of Tolkien fans’ affection is in safe hands.

As Jackson has noted, it has taken literally four decades for cinema technology to reach the necessary level of sophistication to bring Tolkien’s epic to life. For several years, Jackson has devoted himself to this unprecedented production which saw a cast of thousands making three movies simultaneously. The results will be three separately released instalments, which will see the return of cliffhanger cinema for the first time since Saturday morning matinees of decades ago. With the expectation that Lord Of The Rings was going to be one of the biggest cinematic phenomena of all time, talent was queing up to take part, and among the final cast list were Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee and Sean Bean. Indeed, many of the thesps have been overly reverential regarding the material, with Elijah Wood declaring: “The way we shot the movie, everything was so real that we all believed that Frodo and the others really existed in history. Once I had on my prosthetic ears and feet for the first time, I really knew what it was to be a hobbit”.

Not to be outdone, Ian Holm has compared playing the role of Bilbo to playing Hamlet, saying: “I mean, this is just my version of Bilbo, just as it would be my version of Hamlet. He’s an eternal character, but as an actor you play it as you see it in front of you and you trust in that.”

Rather refreshingly, when Moviehouse spoke to John Rhys Davies, who plays Gimli the dwarf in all three movies, he was a long way from speaking in hallowed tones. He admitted that he had had more than one or two misgivings about the project, and credits the insistence of one of his two grown-up sons for his presence in the film. “My eldest son was a fan of Tolkien and Middle-earth – he came home from school one half-term and we hardly saw him for weeks, he was just reading Lord of the Rings. And he it was who, when I was bitching and moaning to the effect that I wasn’t sure about playing Gimli the dwarf and that it was a potential waste of two years of my life, implored me to go ahead and do it.

“But I was very much fifty-fifty about getting involved in the first place – obviously, it occurs to you ‘Where is the mileage in playing a dwarf with prosthetic make-up?’ Certainly, the money wasn’t attractive – the project had some interesting people, but I wasn’t that wild about the book. I’d tried to read it, given up, was never a Tolkien fan. I was resistant to Tolkien – I was at university when the thing came out, and I suppose I had a classicist snobbishness about it at the time, when you can’t imagine that anything contemporary could be at all significant. That was the core of my dismissal of the book. For the purposes of the film, I obviously felt obliged to re-read it and enjoyed it far more and discovered its quality. The film made me a convert to the book, and no matter how purist your views of literature may be I think one must concede it is a really exceptional and remarkable creation, an entire cosmology in itself and a vast achievement.

“Although I remember initially being very wary of the Norse-saga technique: ‘Now, this sword was given to Dulf by Snorri son of Elf, who himself had received it from Borri, who had had it made out of wood from the last oak from the Forest of Rundin, a forest which itself had been possessed by a special doom which had been brought about by the Dark Witch’… and on, and on and on. But all these layers and levels give depth and dimension to the world that he’s created, and make it whole.”

Although the veteran actor has had experience with sequels before now, having featured in Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, he found the Lord Of The Rings experience pretty gruelling. And with demands on the cast to learn how to swordfight, ride horseback, canoe, speak Elvish and climb mountains, who could blame him?

“As a group of actors, in being part of the Fellowship, it soon became evident that an extraordinary cameraderie was particularly felt by the younger members,” Rhys-Davies testifies. “But because of the nature of the prosthetic, I was always in make-up and I felt that I missed out on a lot of the real fun and comradeship. Added to which, I had a reaction to the prosthetic. I developed this eczema and crevices, were appearing in my skin, I was this ugly infected creature with a skin condition that could be terminal and contagious. My heart would be quailing now if I had to go back and do it again, and I don’t think I could. On average, I was in make-up for seven hours a day: that bit was quite hateful. I think everyone was aware of the special nature of the project, and everyone behaved damnably well. The only grumpy person was me, I’m afraid it all got the better of my temper once or twice, looking like shit and being unable to go anywhere.”

With the film’s cast consisting of literally thousands, it’s probable that director Jackson had less time than usual to attend to individual performances. “You would be right in that,” avers Rhys-Davies, “‘but then Peter Jackson cast brilliantly, I remember turning up for a first reading and looking around the room thinking ‘that kid’s got to be Frodo, that one’s Sam, that must be Merry and there’s Pippin’. Which is a considerable achievement, given that the hobbits are not hugely distinguishable as characters. The casting is consistently brilliant throughout, which also meant he didn’t need to waste time telling the actors exactly how he wanted the parts played.”

With Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth requiring more than 900 suits of armour, over 2000 rubber and safety weapons, 100 specialist medieval handmade weapons, and more than 20,000 individual household and everyday items which were handmade by artisans, John Rhys-Davies was constantly impressed by thescale of the production, its colossal cast and its state-of-the-art facilities in the middle of New Zealand.

“He (Jackson) created an entire film industry to service this dream. I went there expecting a good-natured amiable amateur approach and found legions upon legions of workshops filled with armourers, costumers, state-of-the-art computer guys. Where New Zealand didn’t have the expertise, he brought it in from around the world. I spent a couple of weeks walking around marvelling at it all, thinking ‘I’ve never seen anything on this scale, this is incredible.’ He never lost his cool, he never lost his patience, he was indefatigible, and the usual calamities that happen during filming didn’t seem to shake him.”

The amiable Rhys-Davies is in no doubt whatsoever about Lord Of The Rings’ success: “My experience of trilogies has been that... let’s say, Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out, it has a huge following and huge expectations. Part two – in that case, Temple of Doom comes out and it’s just a slight disappointment to many fans, it’s not quite what they wanted or it’s too dark – and so there’s both expectation and doubt when the third episode comes out, though Last Crusade is now one of the ten highest-grossing films ever.