Well, we’ve been watching them at the rate of one a night for the last week (last night we took a break so that Anne and I could go out). And my conclusions are as follows:

The Fellowship of the Ring: Lots more extended scenes and fewer completely new ones, compared to the film. The extra material was generally very good, though oddly enough two of the new scenes (the Elves passing through the Shire, and Aragorn’s mother’s tomb) seemed rather bolted on.

Unlike the other films we’ve seen most of the extra two DVDs here as well, and of course it’s all absolutely fascinating. The introduction to the special effects if anything deepens your appreciation of scenes like Hobbiton, Moria, Rivendell, and so on. It’s a bit sad that despite the mini-feature ostensibly on Tolkien, we don’t actually get more than still photos of the author himself – not even quotes from letters if I remember rightly. But we do get lots of good quotes from Tom Shippey and Brian Sibley. (And is that Patrick Curry the same one whose writings on astrology I used for my M Phil?)

The Two Towers: This was the one film we hadn’t seen in the cinema, partly because it came out just at the time that U was born but also I’d read in the review in Interzone that it took a lot of liberties with the plot. Well, indeed it does: Aragorn falls over a cliff; Faramir takes Frodo, Sam and Gollum as far west as Osgiliath; Pippin tricks Treebeard into going to war against Saruman; and the Elves save the day at Helm’s Deep. It all seemed worthwhile to me, except perhaps for the Aragorn bit (and another bot where he tells Eowyn his true age) which felt a bit bolted on. (Also we never find out what happens to the Elves who tuned up at Helm’s Deep.) I was sorry, however, to lose Gimli’s reaction to the glittering caves. More on this later.

Great bits: Gollum is the real star here. Not just the special effects but the story of potential redemption of someone whose life has been poisoned by the Ring. Treebeard and the Ents are not bad either, though I wished they had looked a bit more solid. And of course, the flooding of Isengard takes your breath away – especially when you consider certain recent awful events in the real world.

The Return of the King: We start with a huge deviation from the book – interestingly not in the film either – as Saruman and Wormtongue both get killed at Orthanc. So on the one hand we who have read the book know that the Scouring of the Shire is not going to happen; but on the other hand, added to the variations from the text in the previous film, there’s a real sense of suspense now about whether the ending will actually go as planned. The film becomes also a bit of a Bildungsroman for Merry and Pippin. The parallels between the grievously wounded Frodo and Faramir were a point I had missed in the cinema.

And when Sam does return, and the little Gamgees (played by the little Astins) leap into his arms, and he says, “Well, I’m back”, well, anyone whose eyes do not moisten has no soul.

The set piece that made the biggest impression on me in the cinema, the lighting of the beacons, was much less impressive here; small screen vs big, I suppose. On the other hand, Shelob, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and the climax at Mount Doom are still fantastic. And the extra length actually makes the hail-and-farewell scenes at the end, which seemed excessive in the film, seem better paced to the work as a whole. Finally, let’s hear it for the Mouth of Sauron, gloriously horrible in the DVD though knifed from the film.

Overall: C’mon, folks, Liv Tyler is pretty good actually. And while it jars at first for the young hobbits to have such different accents, and Gimli to be cast as comic relief (so we lose the Glittering Caves bit), it actually makes him a more rounded character than in the book. Also the relationship between Frodo and Sam (and by extension Gollum) in my view acquires much greater depth in the Jackson treatment, simply by allowing Frodo to be more visibly flawed (and perhaps Gollum to be a little smarter). In sum: I liked it.

Basically, we who have loved the book for decades are incredibly lucky. (Anyone out there remember the 1978 Ralph Bakshi version, which ended with Frodo and Sam adrift in the river, Merry and Pippin in Treebeard’s clutches, and the others besieged in Helm’s Deep?) This is not just a full-length treatment but a quintuple full-length treatment, made by fans for fans. And its success bears witness to the success of Tolkien’s own project to write an epic “linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama”. We won’t see the like of this again; it’s exceptionally rare for a such a popular film to capture the spirit of such a popular book in this way. (I don’t know but I suspect the last, perhaps the only other, example may have been Gone With The Wind, in 1939.) And I’ve still got the extra material on the other four and a half DVD’s to get through. Further enjoyment awaits.