The Lord of the Rings trilogy of films directed by Peter Jackson is widely considered to be one of the best trilogies ever put on screen. The films attempted the impossible, as the story written by J.R.R. Tolkien was previously considered to be unfilmable, as it was too sprawling and grand for any movie to be able to do it justice. While there had been several attempts to adapt The Lord of the Rings before, chiefly Ralph Bakshi’s animated film from the 1970s, nothing had been as ambitious as the three live-action films Jackson delivered. With Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens co-writing the scripts to the trilogy alongside Jackson, The Lord of the Rings was a massive gamble, as all three movies would be shot back-to-back and released in subsequent years. New Line Cinema sunk just over $280 million into the production of the three films, having agreed to do so before the first entry in the series was even released.

Luckily, the gamble paid off. The first entry in the series, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released in December 2001 and was an instant sensation. The movie went on to gross nearly $900 million worldwide, and it was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won four of the Oscars it was nominated for; those being: Best Cinematography; Best Makeup; Best Original Score, and Best Visual Effects. As the overall trilogy of Lord of the Rings movies has achieved legendary status over the years, The Fellowship of the Ring remains the place where it all started. Now that it has been over twenty years since the film was released, and the Lord of the Rings series has continued to expand with the likes of Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, revisiting the first entry of Jackson’s trilogy makes for a unique experience.

How It Adapts the Book

Lord of the Rings characters Frodo and Gandalf
New Line Cinema

The novel of The Fellowship of the Ring was first published in 1954 as the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien had written as a single complete unit. As a whole, Jackson’s film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings make numerous changes from what was originally presented on the page, and that is certainly true of The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien was a writer who consistently brought great depth and detail to his work. Everything included in his works was a very deliberate creative choice. As a result, the Lord of the Rings books, The Fellowship of the Ring especially, are very dense reads. Much of the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring consists of long and winding descriptions of nature, the lore of Middle-Earth, and the inner thoughts of characters. It's the kind of stuff that can be hard to accurately bring to the screen since it is so thoroughly intertwined with the medium of the written word.

When adapting The Fellowship of the Ring to screen, there were changes that needed to be made. Much of the timeline of the story was condensed in order to make the events flow together more seamlessly. The biggest instance of this comes after Bilbo’s birthday party in the opening act, when Frodo receives the Ring and Gandalf frantically leaves to do his own research. While the film seems to imply that Gandalf wasn’t gone for all that long (a few months, maybe a year at most), in the original story, 17 years pass between the Wizard’s departure and his return to confirm that Bilbo’s ring was the One Ring. From there, Frodo and Samwise almost immediately pick up and leave the Shire to make for the village of Bree, while, in the novel, there were months of planning and prep that went into the departure of the hobbits.

On top of the time compression of the film, Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring also omits several notable characters from the story. The most notorious of which is the jolly fellow Tom Bombadil, who saves Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry from trouble in the Old Forest as they leave The Shire. There was also the Elven hero Glorfindel, whose part in the original story was instead fulfilled by Arwen Undómiel in the film. The depiction of Sauron differed in the film as well, as the choice to show the series' villain as a giant flaming eye atop Barad-dûr was made specifically for the films. These are only a few of the numerous book-to-screen changes that are seen in The Fellowship of the Ring. While some may be significant, what Jackson, Boyens and Walsh did so brilliantly with the film, was maintaining the core story and not altering the spirit of Tolkien’s work. There were certainly changes made to the material, but the overall experience and story of The Fellowship of the Ring remain almost entirely untouched. It’s the perfect kind of adaptation that adjusts the story just enough to be most effective on-screen, while still staying true to what made the tale work to begin with.

Related: Lord of the Rings: Why There Was Never a Sequel to Ralph Bakshi's Animated Film

How It Holds Up

Sean Bean in Lord of the Rings
New Line Cinema

The early 2000s were an incredibly hit-and-miss time for blockbusters. Some films were extreme concentrations of all the worst trends of the time. Movies like 2003’s Daredevil had a toxic mixture of poor CGI, action clichés and an alt-rock soundtrack that have made them age about as poorly as imaginable. On the other hand, some of the most iconic blockbuster films of all time were released in the early 2000s. They had visual effects that were as stunning as they were pioneering, while the films were also telling sophisticated and considered stories that would resonate with audiences for years to come. Thankfully, The Fellowship of the Ring is the latter.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any moments in The Fellowship of the Ring that show their age. Of course, there are a couple of small instances where it’s clear that the film wasn’t made with 2023 technology. Those issues are mostly just moments where the digital compositing is noticeable. However, overall, The Fellowship of the Ring holds up remarkably well. Many of the film’s effects surpass those of even today’s standards. Whether it be the practical and digital methods that were used to implement the height differences between the Hobbits, Dwarves, Men and Elves, or more fantastical creations like the Balrog, The Fellowship of the Ring features some truly outstanding effects that are just as believable and immersive in 2023 as they were in 2001.

As for the story, it’s no surprise that The Fellowship of the Ring holds up in that regard, considering how faithful and respectful Jackson and the rest of the creative team were to the original work. Tolkien’s work had already withstood the test of a half-century’s worth of aging when the movie was released, and it has continued to earn its high repute in the years since. The world that Tolkien created is one of the most imaginative and extensive in all of fiction, and Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring truly brought that world to life on-screen for the first time. While there had been other adaptations that preceded it, The Fellowship of the Ring was the first time that audiences were thoroughly transported into Middle-Earth. It felt like a real place that the viewer could visit, and people wanted to be in Middle-Earth so badly that New Zealand has received a never-ending and thriving tourism industry as a result.

Related: The Good (and Not-So Good) of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Context Around It

Ian McKellen as Gandalf
New Line Cinema

The thing that has changed the most regarding The Fellowship of the Ring over the last twenty years is the context that surrounds it. The film is obviously just the first chapter in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but when the film was released, it was still up in the air whether the next two movies would maintain the same quality as the first. We now know that The Two Towers and The Return of the King are more-than-worthy follow-ups to Fellowship, with many people arguing that either of those films could be the best of the trilogy. As it exists within the context of Jackson’s overall trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring is lifted to even higher heights. While it can still be watched as a singular experience if you want, the film is so deeply tied into what comes next that it now almost exclusively exists as a portion of the whole. Most people these days view watching The Lord of the Rings as a complete experience that involves all three films together, rather than as individual pieces.

Beyond that, The Fellowship of the Ring was the first step in what would build The Lord of the Rings into a much larger film and television franchise. After the success of Jackson’s trilogy, he would return to direct another Middle-Earth trilogy of movies adapted from Tolkien’s The Hobbit. While those films are almost universally considered to be nowhere near the quality of The Lord of the Rings, they were major financial successes that proved that the world of Middle-Earth could successfully exist on-screen beyond the core story of Frodo Baggins. Now the franchise is in the midst of even further expansion, as The Rings of Power is adapting the stories of the Second Age, thousands of years prior to The Lord of the Rings, into a streaming series on Prime Video. While that series has gotten off to a bumpy start, it was still a hit for the streamer and has plenty of promise for future seasons. There is also a new animated film in the franchise set for release next year. That film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, will exist within the same continuity as Jackson’s films.

Revisiting The Fellowship of the Ring today, it’s hard to watch the film without at least somewhat considering all the material that would follow as a result of its success. Whether it be with the character of Bilbo and how the overall story now ties into Jackson’s versions of The Hobbit, or the further context of the film’s prologue, which is now being provided in The Rings of Power (even though that show is technically a different continuity), there has been so much more exploration of Middle-Earth on-screen in the years since the film was released. Viewers know a lot more about the world and lore of Middle-Earth now than they did when The Fellowship of the Ring was released. A line such as Gandalf’s reference to “the incident with the dragon” in addition to the inclusion of characters like Elrond and Galadriel, carries more meaning to them than they once did. The Fellowship of the Ring is where the modern age of Middle-Earth all started, and the movie remains one of the highest points in the series to date.