Special effects of The Lord of the Rings film series Later on, the scenes were merged using digital effects. Besides Weathertop, many of the other scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy were shot in this way, first by filming the scenery or set miniatures, then the actors on a studio set, and merging the two together. An example of this is in the Mines of Moria, when the Fellowship was fighting the Cave-troll in Balin's Tomb, and again when the Fellowship is on the Khazad-Dum stairs and bridge. Gandalf has his own particular scene with computer graphics as he grapples with the Balrog as they fall to their
The Lord of the Rings (film series) time, who called it "a masterful piece of filmmaking." The film series provoked both positive and negative reaction from fans and scholars of the novels, and was sometimes seen as changing parts Tolkien felt thematically necessary in terms of characters, themes, events and subtlety. Some fans of the book who disagreed with such changes have released fan edits of the films such as "The Lord of the Rings: The Purist Edition", which removed many of the changes to bring them closer to the original. Various changes to characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Arwen, Denethor, Faramir, Gimli, and Frodo, when considered