And probably to pay him an additional fee for reuse of the FotR footage in another film. Easy money. :) I must confess that I did not sit through the final credits. I hadn't left my seat once since 20 minutes before the film started and right at that moment I had more urgent matters on my...
True, but part of that was due to the fact that there had been three books, and that the story is so massive that you couldn't effectively have people watch it in one huge gulp. But at the same time they were in a very different position from George Lucas making the first three Star Wars films...
Right, the movies are not a "trilogy" any more than the books were. A trilogy, literary or cinematic, is a collection of three individual works that are somehow connected - by character, story, theme. TLotR, in print and on film, is one continuous narrative that was released in three parts...
Actually I thought the island was counted as part of the Undying Lands (hence the plural and the fact that nothing dies on the island, either) although obviously not part of the mainland (whose Elvish names escape me at the moment.) But if not, I stand corrected.
The invisibility thing was a...