“The Fellowship Of The Ring for me was the one most faithful to Tolkien. The one that had the most to do with any kind of subtlety in terms of performance and storytelling.

“Starting with the second one it became more of a blockbuster special effects thing. That’s not to say as that type of movie they weren’t the best.

"You can’t argue with the films’ success, but had it been me, I would have focused less on the effects and more on the characterisations.

“I’d have allowed the secondary characters to speak more and not be so focused on the heroes. There was more balance in the way that all the races of Middle-earth were presented in the first one. It was more about the relationships… That’s just my personal taste.”