“Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back. In the first [Lord of the Rings] movie, yes, there’s Rivendell and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes — it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like [all] that to the power of 10.” — Viggo Mortensen on Rings/Hobbit maestro Peter Jackson in recently-published Telegraph interview.