Fans are hoping that the technical wizardry at Jackson's command is finally making Tolkien's picaresque fantasies possible in a live-action film. The diminutive hobbits and dwarfs, for example, are being played by normal-size actors and then shrunk with a computer effect known as forced perspective.

"In terms of sheer scope, I think this trilogy is going to be vast, one of the biggest things we've ever seen," says Steve Hockensmith, editor of Cinescape, a magazine aimed at fans of fantasy and science fiction films. "But in terms of commercial success, in terms of grosses -- well, goodness gracious, I really don't know. That's the $25,000 question, isn't it?"

The $150 million question, to be more precise. Advance hysteria for "The Lord of the Rings" has reached pandemic proportions among Tolkien readers and the Internet's Ain't It Cool News movie fan-boy set. (There is considerable crossover between those two groups.) Hockensmith is not the only industry observer to wonder how this risky, densely plotted trilogy from a relatively unknown director will be remembered -- a fantasy classic along the lines of "Star Wars" and "The Wizard of Oz"? Or a fey flop closer to Scott's "Legend," but three times longer? Then there are the big-budget costume epics that vanish without a trace: Did any of you actually see "First Knight," the dreary 1995 retelling of the Arthurian legends with Sean Connery as King Arthur and a gruesomely miscast Richard Gere as Lancelot? Didn't think so.

Miramax was sufficiently worried about Jackson's ambitious plan to shoot all three "Lord of the Rings" installments at once that it put the entire project in turnaround, allowing New Line to assume the risk and reap the potential rewards. Having two sequels in the can before the first film even opens is "a tremendous crapshoot," Hockensmith observes. (In the past, studios have given the go-ahead to the filming of simultaneous sequels only after the first was a major hit, as with "Back to the Future" and, currently, "The Matrix.") "Let's say the first one stiffs, or is just mediocre," Hockensmith says. "The whole thing could be quite a humiliation by the time the third one comes out. New Line are really sticking their necks out for something that is not a sure thing."

Hockensmith's caution is not shared by many Tolkien fans. "I will bet my hat that the 'Lord of the Rings' franchise will outperform anything George Lucas could ever dream of," says Cliff Broadway (his real name!), a Los Angeles playwright and actor. To readers of TheOneRing.net, the most prominent of the numerous Web sites tracking the making of Jackson's films, Broadway is known for the columns of detailed Tolkien analysis he writes under the alias Quickbeam. (The name, he tells me, is that of a young ent who appears in Tolkien's classic, and if you need further explanation you'll have to find it for yourself.)

There is at least some evidence to support the Quickbeam perspective. When New Line's official "Lord of the Rings" Web site posted the first Internet trailer from Jackson's film on April 7, it was downloaded by 1.7 million people. That blew away the previous record for an Internet film trailer, the million-plus downloads for "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" in its first day.

Barely a minute and a half long, the trailer includes only a few snippets of footage that will presumably be seen in the films. We get brief glimpses of McKellen as the gray-bearded Gandalf and Liv Tyler as Arwen, along with shots of the warlike Orcs, Sauron's foot soldiers, in their elaborate makeup and a few spectacular seconds of an antlike army streaming across the plains of Mordor, with Mount Doom, where Sauron forged the Ring, smoldering in the distance. There are also a few behind-the-scenes shots of the production's artisans creating the makeup effects and working on computer graphics, and short comments from Jackson and Wood. Perhaps most encouraging, from a Tolkien fan's perspective, is that the Middle Earth Jackson seems to be creating looks dark and a little raw around the edges; these will clearly not be movies for children. The Ring itself, the powerful and evil talisman at the center of Tolkien's universe, also makes an appearance and looks just as simple and terrible as it should, virtually burning with energy as it rests in someone's palm.

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics