There is an enormous amount of CGI in Lord of the Rings that you don’t really notice. Yes they used lots of miniatures and other practical effects, but that only takes you so far. The extended DVDs are full of some of the really cool ways they combined digital and practical. They show PJ “filming” at one point with a block of wood with a mocap ball on it.

They invented an entire new software just to make the huge battle scenes good. That software, Massive, is still used today to simulate giant crowds.

Gollum hasn’t aged perfectly, but pretty well for an entirely CGI character from the early 2000s.