The Lord of the Rings has turned into a tremendous blockbuster, and there is little left to be said about the epic three-part story about Hobbits, Elves, and Ringwraights that you haven't read elsewhere. But most reviews focus on "The Fellowship of the Ring" as hugely successful massmarketing event. With all the noise, it's easy to forget that Peter Jackson's smash action spectacle is also a literary adaptation. The release of the DVD, a much more intimate and less overwhelming format, is an opportunity to view the film as big-budget but artistically ambitious entertainment crafted by one of world film's most auspicious directors.

For New Line, the choice of the New Zealander for the three-film project was not obvious. Anybody who has seen "Dead Alive, "Heavenly Creatures," or his debut "Bad Taste" knows that Jackson's sense of humor is as unpredictable as it is bizarre. Anybody who has seen "Meet the Feebles" also knows that tastelessness is not something he shies away from--his debut film "Bad Taste" announced it right from the start. All his films also evince a strong interest in escapism. In "Heavenly Creatures," young Kate Winslet seduces her friend into a fantastic world, with tragic consequences. With "Lord of the Rings," Jackson completely entered into what many consider the greatest fantasy worlds ever created.

The Oxford professor who wrote the novels certainly didn't share Jackson's penchant for exploding heads, teenage murder, and drug-abusing puppets, but his obsessive care in creating alternate universes is unparalleled. J.R.R. Tolkien was not a great writer in the sense that his characters leapt of the page fullblooded. His lack of talent for snappy pacing, economical exposition, and sharp dialogue would probably keep his books from being published today. What Tolkien excelled in, however, was the construction of an immense world complete with languages, culture, and a complex history. What the telling of the stories lacked, the power and detail of his creation more than made up for. As a builder of worlds, Tolkien was a master, and to most of the sword-and-sorcery genre that's out there today, he still is the master.

Three-volume blueprint in hand, Jackson set out to obsessively recreate the world that Tolkien had mapped out. Much has been said about the rough beauty of the New Zealand setting, the qualities of the Oscar-winning cast, and the state-of-the-art special effects. What caught my attention, however, was the amount of detail Jackson bestowed on every scene. Sly allusions to adventures covered elsewhere in Tolkien's work, the ruins in the distance that tell of a long history, the wet and dirty hair of the protagonists -- these details make the world complete and utterly believable. One can smell the wet earth and feel the heft of Aragorn's sword. "The Lord of the Rings" is simply the most realistic fantasy film ever made. Where other films dazzle us with their obvious artificiality, Jackson works hard to convince us of the reality of Middle-Earth, the work's central character.

The scale is at once sweeping and intense with attention to minutiae. In one breathtaking shot, the camera swoops down over Isengard, revealing the transformation of an entire landscape, only to find a moth and follow it into the palm of a wizard. In courage, inventiveness and scope, the film matches Tolkien's monumental feat of the imagination.

In Jackson's hands, the translation of the book into a film, so often a catastrophe, worked beautifully to improve on Tolkien's weaknesses while preserving its strengths. Tight editing and minor fixes of Tolkien's storyline manage to improve on the Tolkien's leisurly, sometimes meandering pacing, and some human moments that are rushed over in the heroic cadences of the narrative gain prominence in the movie. The film is not only tighter in emotional impact and pacing, it is also utterly loyal in spirit: a pitch-perfect adaptation that is, in fact, better than the book.

Like the clay gardens Kate Winslet conjures up in "Heavenly Creatures," "The Lord of the Rings" is a fantasy world that can be entered into. To an escapist such as Peter Jackson, this is what the medium film was made for.

The two-disc DVD set features several specials and made-for-TV featurettes, a preview of "The Two Towers," and a music video, but unfortunately no director's commentary (presumably, Jackson is busy editing the next installment). One caveat for hard-core fans: New Line is releasing an extended version of the film in November.