Viggo Mortensen: Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings sequels were a 'sloppy mess'

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Rex)

Viggo Mortensen has attacked Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings franchise, arguing that his focus on special effects became a “mess”.

The Aragorn actor, 55, named first movie The Fellowship of the Ring his favourite but bemoaned the heavy use of computer generated imagery in the second and third instalments.

“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,” Mortensen told The Telegraph.

“In the first movie 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.”

Mortensen also criticised The Hobbit films, claiming they were like the Lord of the Rings series only “to the power of ten”.

Mortensen is famous for being cast as Aragorn the day before filming began, after Jackson sacked Stuart Townsend. But he has described shooting the movies as “chaos” while dismissing initial footage as “very sloppy”.

"It needed massive reshoots which we did, year after year," he said. "But (Jackson) would have never been given the extra money to do those if the first one hadn't been a huge success.

“Anybody who says they knew it was going to be the success it was, I don’t think it’s really true."

Jackson went on to win Best Director and Best Film at the 2004 Oscars for The Return of the King.

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