It's as if the whole Lord Of The Rings thing has got out of hand; as if the story dreamed up in the outsized mind of an Oxford academic is simply too big. Simon Tolkien, grandson of the creator of hobbits and Middle Earth, saw the final film in the trilogy at its first preview screening in London. LISTEN |  | Hear moments from The Return Of The King as actor Billy Boyd, who plays
Pippin, gives his view. | | |
One of the actors, Billy Boyd, told the BBC he thought The Return Of The King was the best of the three. But Mr Tolkien disagreed. "I think it's an amazing spectacle," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It's amazing to watch - some of the architectur and the landscapes are quite staggering. "But I actually thought it was was the weaker of the three. "The problem is really that there are so many things going on in so many places that unlike The Fellowship Of The Ring, where everyone was together on the journey, you get very confused as to who is doing what." He found it frustrating that just as he was becoming absorbed by what was happening with a particular group - the hobbits, say - the action would cut to somewhere else. "You can't get into each individual episode," he said. "I think there's wonderful things in it but I would have liked to have cut much more of the battle scene and special effects in this one, and had more development of the characters." He also said his grandfather might have had trouble with the way parts of the story have had to be cut to transpose it to the screen - and also with promotional Frodo crisps. "I think anyone who writes a book like this, which is really your whole life, couldn't really cope with the film treatment of it, but that doesn't mean he would have felt that a film in itself was wrong. "I think he would have found Frodo crisps very alien, but my hope is that that is very transitory." Mr Tolkien also admitted that having a famous literary name initially stopped him becoming a writer. "It was very, very diffuclt for a long time and put me off, and I didn't write a word until I was 40. "When I came to be 40 I thought, 'I've got to reconsider this,' and now I write." The Return Of The King opens at cinemas across the UK on Wednesday, 17 December 2003, including at the following venues: • Odeon, Horse Fair, Banbury
• Odeon George Street, George Street, Oxford
• Odeon Magdalen Street, Magdalen Street, Oxford
• Ozone Multiplex Cinema, Grenoble Road, Greater Leys, Oxford
• Phoenix Picture House, 57-58 Walton Street, Oxford
• Regal Henley Cinema, Boroma Way, Henley-on-Thames
• Regent, 2 Newbury Street, Wantage | 
