E! Online
February 1, 2001

February Force of Hobbit
Staff Reporter

Editor's Note: This synopsis was borrowed from the folks at Tolkien Online.

It's that time again for E! Online to update their website. This month we are treated with several wonderful gems. New this month is a short recap of the last month including information about people who have left the production and the toys which are coming. The biggest updated information is an interview with Peter Jackson. I have included several questions below.

How do you balance the ... scale of the film with its intimate moments?
The interesting thing about LOTR is that the true villain of the film is a tiny gold ring. It's not a fire-breathing dragon, it's not a mechanical robot, it's not a shark. It's a tiny thing. The evil is psychological. And in the movies, the hardest things to convey onscreen are psychological things, because they're intangible.

How do you show the evil of the Ring?
I'm forever grappling to think of imaginative ways to show how evil the Ring is. And ultimately it can only ever be conveyed through shots of the Ring and shots of people and their faces and their eyes when they are encountering it. It's a challenge to make each character's encounter different. Some fall prey to the Ring a little faster than others. Music will be a huge factor here.

So, the Ring is a character in the film?
Yeah, we've almost given it a personality. Obviously, we have other villains--the Orcs, the Uruk-hai, Saruman, the Wargs, the Balrog--but all of them are secondary to Sauron, who is represented in the film, more than anything, by this tiny little ring.

Click Here for the Entire February Update