Talking Tolkien: The Elvish Craft of CGI: A conversation between film expert and Tolkien enthusiast, Mark Sinker, and CLE

Voted the greatest book of all time in several polls, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has been made into three films between 2001–2003 by New Zealand director Peter Jackson with the complete trilogy out on DVD in 2004. Prompted by the question: “What would Tolkien have made of them?” Mark Sinker discusses the films and the books by way of Tolkien’s inspiration William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts Movement’s notion of ‘‘right-making’’. Sinker contrasts the techniques of computer generated imagery (CGI) with Tolkien’s own ethic of the art and craft of writing, looking at Tolkien’s radical contribution to Fantasy as a genre for adults and how ‘right’ story-telling emerges into 21st century culture.