Taking full advantage of the perks of the fantasy genre, J.R.R. Tolkien not only invented a whole universe, he also did not adhere to known age structures when he wrote The Lord of The Rings. The ages of his characters differ wildly; Gollum is almost 600 years old, while Elrond, the elf, is several thousand years old, and Gandalf the Grey – and later the White – is immortal (for display reasons, both are thus not mentioned here).
One trilogy to rule them all
Already an established literary success, the 2001-2003 The Lord of the Rings movie adaptations by Peter Jackson were also extremely successful at the
box office and even won several
Oscars. The third part in particular,
The Return of the King, was very popular. There have been other adaptations of the trilogy, for radio, stage, and television, but none were ever that successful.
There and back again
After the immense success of The Lord of the Rings, Jackson then decided to also adapt the prequel. The Hobbit, which Tolkien had written as a children’s book and which is much shorter than The Lord of the Rings, was adapted into a trilogy as well and turned out to be
equally successful in cinemas.