Grant Morrison Explains Realism in Comics

Let's hunt some ORC!

So I had the pleasure of introducing The Lord of the Rings to a friend of mine over the last couple days. He'd never seen the films or read the books before, so we started with The Fellowship of the Ring film (extended edition, of course, as it should always be). He seemed to enjoy it.
I feel like I've just spread the good news of Tolkien. It's fun.

I forgot how much I love Lord of the Rings. Sitting down and watching it again for the first time in a long time was a lot of fun.

There's something about Lord of the Rings that's really unique. In large part, it's the borderline-ridiculous attention to detail. The level of artistry is just insane. In any other movie, you can simply look hard enough and see the cracks in the illusion. But no matter how hard you look, you will only find more and more detail in Lord of the Rings. Every set is believably built; every prop is intricately crafted with all the same artistry that you'd expect the real thing to have. There's just no end to it.

It's kind of like that moment when you see something crazy and have to make sure you're not dreaming. But with Lord of the Rings, there's no pinch to wake you up; you're never pulled out of the story. It's like you're staring through a window into Middle-Earth itself.

No other film series can claim that. Not even Star Wars, practically perfect as it is, can claim that. With Star Wars, you can always find the odd prop in the original trilogy that's obviously a real-world object, or an incredibly off-putting shot of a CG creature. Not so with Lord of the Rings. It just feels real.

We're gonna watch the other two movies over the week. I'll probably write more then.