The film that proved a $300m three-film fantasy could be made by one director in one country in one continuous production.
Frodo Baggins inherits a ring from his uncle Bilbo. Gandalf identifies it as the One Ring, the central object of Sauron's power, and tells Frodo it must be destroyed in Mount Doom — the only fire that can unmake it. Frodo leaves the Shire with Sam, Merry and Pippin, picks up Aragorn at Bree, and joins a Council at Rivendell that assembles the Fellowship: nine to take the Ring south.
The first film takes the Fellowship from the Shire through Bree, Weathertop, Rivendell, the failed Caradhras pass, the Mines of Moria (and Gandalf's fall), Lothlórien, and the parting of the Fellowship at Amon Hen.
Peter Jackson and New Line shot all three Lord of the Rings films back-to-back in New Zealand from October 1999 to December 2000 — fifteen months of principal photography, a 2,400-person crew, ten production units shooting simultaneously by the end. No one had attempted a project at this scale on this schedule before. The films were released a year apart: Fellowship 2001, Two Towers 2002, Return of the King 2003.
What's remarkable, from a craft standpoint, is the visual continuity across three films shot together. The Shire looks like the Shire. Hobbiton was built fourteen months in advance to let the gardens grow in. Weta Workshop, Richard Taylor's effects house, built every piece of weaponry and armour from scratch. The result is a film where the world feels lived in rather than dressed.
From Frodo asking 'What is this place?' to the Balrog roar that ends the sequence, the Moria chapter runs approximately twenty-five minutes — almost a self-contained film. It is the showcase for Jackson's command of pace. The dwarven tomb. The Watcher in the Water. The drum drum drum in the deep. The bridge of Khazad-dûm.
Howard Shore's score — the Fellowship theme, then the Moria horns, then the Gandalf falling motif — is doing structural work the cinematography couldn't do alone. Shore composed roughly 14 hours of music across the trilogy.
Ian McKellen's Gandalf, Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn (cast a week before production began, replacing Stuart Townsend), Sean Bean's Boromir, Cate Blanchett's Galadriel — every casting choice in Fellowship is now so settled in the public imagination that it's easy to forget it was a series of bets. Mortensen had to learn swordsmanship in three weeks. McKellen had been turned down for Saruman and signed for Gandalf instead — and Christopher Lee, who had wanted Gandalf, ended up playing Saruman.
Elijah Wood's Frodo is the performance the trilogy depends on. Wood plays the role with a watchful interiority that gives the Ring its weight.