Commentators have compared Peter Jackson's 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with the book on which it was based, J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954–1955 The Lord of the Rings, remarking that while both have been extremely successful commercially, the film version does not necessarily capture the intended meaning of the book. They have admired Jackson's ability to film the long and complex work at all; the beauty of the cinematography, sets, and costumes; the quality of the music; and the epic scale of his version of Tolkien's story. They have, however, found the characters and the story greatly weakened by Jackson's emphasis on action and violence at the expense of psychological depth; the loss of Tolkien's emphasis on free will and individual responsibility; the flattening out of Tolkien's balanced treatment of evil to a simple equation of the One Ring with evil; and the replacement of Frodo's inner journey by an American "hero's journey" or monomyth with Aragorn as the hero.
Commentators have admired the simultaneous use of images, words, and music to convey emotion, evoking the appearance of Middle-earth, creating wonderfully believable creatures, and honouring Tolkien's Catholic vision with images that can work also for non-Christians.
Fans, actors, critics, and scholars have seen Jackson's version as a success: on its own terms, as an adaptation of Tolkien, and as going beyond Tolkien into a sort of modern folklore. The development of fan films such as Born of Hope and The Hunt for Gollum, and of a modern folklore with characters such as elves, dwarves, wizards, and halflings, all derived from Jackson's rendering of Tolkien, have been viewed as measures of this success.