Ah, but Hollywood made huge epics long before LOTR. All PJ really did was throw in excessive amounts of CGI. And you'd think he could have found a live volcano to stand in for Mount Doom. Instead he just took the easy CGI shortcut.
It's funny, but when you watch the Superman movie with director's commentary, they always mention how each shot was an amazing feat and now it's really nothing because all you do is call up the CG guys and they'll have it for you. I'm sure they're glad for budget and safety reasons they prefer it the way it is today, they miss all the ingenuity that the filmmakers had before. I've since stopped my subscription to Cinefex, because now it's pure CG explanations and less modelling marvels.
I'm certain the CG people are laughing at how they think it's that easy, I just feel that it's less fun to read about the behind the scenes stuff unless you want to read about textures and AI behaviour.
Also in the Superman commentary, they talked about how they destroyed part of the environment when they brought in some dirt from on place to another and the bugs from the dirt attacked the new location's vegetation...