\u201cToo many endings, man!\u201d That was Jack Nicholson<\/strong>\u2019s blunt response to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King<\/em>\u2014as recounted by Frodo himself. Elijah Wood<\/strong> encountered the legendary actor backstage on the Golden Globes in 2004, when the third movie in Peter Jackson<\/strong>\u2019s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s fantasy epic was on the marketing campaign path for the upcoming Academy Awards. The trio of flicks, which started with The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em> in 2001, continued with The Two Towers<\/em> in 2002, and concluded with the finale in 2003, had been an unspeakably high-stakes gamble, with a bank-breaking $281 million finances, a back-breaking filming and postproduction tempo in New Zealand, and cutting-edge visible results, like Andy Serkis<\/strong>\u2019s efficiency seize of Gollum, that had by no means earlier than been tried on such a grand scale.<\/p>\n The danger had paid off: ring-a-ding-ding<\/a>. Not solely did the trilogy pull in colossal international field workplace returns of greater than $2.9 billion, however it cleared a path for twenty years of episodic epics, from Game of Thrones<\/em> on tv to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in theaters and numerous wannabes and imitators. Long earlier than that, nevertheless, in early 2004, The Lord of the Rings<\/em> was on the hunt for the last word business recognition on the Oscars\u2014and the groundbreaking trilogy was getting its chops damaged over its perceived litany of crescendos and culminations.<\/p>\n \u201cI was backstage at the Golden Globes, and Jack Nicholson\u2019s backstage, and he starts talking to me about Lord of the Rings,<\/em>\u201d Wood recounted in an interview<\/a> for the movie\u2019s DVD launch. \u201cAnd he\u2019s like, \u2018Did you die?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, yeah, I mean, it sort of depends on how you look at it, with him going away to the Undying Lands at the end.\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018What are you talking about? I left a half an hour before that\u2026. Too many endings, man! Should have ended it a lot sooner than that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Was this pronouncement by the good Nicholson, the elder statesman of Academy cool, a harbinger of doom for Return of the King<\/em>\u2019s Oscar hopes? It gained greatest drama that evening on the Globes, in addition to greatest director for Jackson, however the studio behind the trilogy, New Line Cinema, feared that sorcery, elves, and the geopolitics of historic mystical realms won’t resonate with the extra erudite members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Fellowship<\/em> had gotten 13 nominations however solely gained 4\u2014cinematography, make-up, rating, and visible results. Towers<\/em> had obtained simply six nods, profitable for sound enhancing and visible results. Each had been in competition for greatest image, however the honor had to this point eluded the franchise. Some feared it was merely out of attain.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest problem\u2013\u2013and this started with Fellowship<\/em>\u2013\u2013was we had the dreaded F-word,\u201d Russell Schwartz,<\/strong> New Line\u2019s president of theatrical advertising and marketing on the time, advised Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> in 2014. \u201cWe were the fantasy movie, and there was no fantasy movie that ever won for best picture.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/65e883c3c1c55da2b8fc80e9\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/lord-of-the-rings-oscars-2004-embed04.jpg\")