Middle-Earthly Creatures - Some Local Comments On The Cinematic Ring-Cycle So Far ('Lord of the Rings')

Stan Jones reports on the impact Peter Jackson's 'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' (2001) has had on the New Zealand film industry and New Zealand culture as a whole: 'Ironically then, the director can create the project because he escaped the background which inspired the story and its myth. He is presented as a creative "genius loci" whose powers derive from his homeland's overall "genius loci". The key seems to be an unfettered energy, a sort of postcolonial creative self-confidence which looks outward from its small home undaunted by The Big World or by the difficulties of a Rings project.'