I was a little apprehensive about The Return of the King. I mean, I knew it would be great — it was, after all, filmed concurrently with the other films, with the same cast and director and source material. But Peter Jackson was passed over for the “Best Director” award in the last two Academy Awards ceremonies, and I was worried that, if the final installment was not as over-the-top great as the first and second, he might not get his due.
I needn’t have feared; The Return of the King lives up to the astounding precedent set by The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and Jackson will almost certainly get his statuette.
And yet, I couldn’t help but be ever-so-slightly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was fantastic — my favorite movie of the year, even. But after investing so much time into watching and rewatching the first two films, I wanted a Big Finish, I wanted the last movie to be even grander and more sublime. But, honestly, how could it? With the characters and cinematography showcased in Fellowship, the war scenes and the eerily realist Gollum on display in Two Towers, Return was left with little new ground to break. And I knew that, even before entering the cinema. But, still. When RotK failed to exceed the films before it, a little voice inside of me kinda went “darn.”
My enjoyment of the film was also vaguely sullied by the fact that I didn’t rewatch The Two Towers before going to see RotK. I had honestly intended to do so in the weeks before the premiere, but I never got around to it. Consequentially, I spent much of the first hour of the film trying to remember all that had happened before. As with TTT, Return gives viewers no “Previous On Lord Of The Rings” recap –which, frankly, is how it should be — so those who didn’t refresh their memories before heading into the theaters may have found their transcendental viewing-experience occasionally interrupted by thoughts of “wait — who’s that guy, again?” So if you’re the one guy in America who hasn’t seen RotK yet (Brent Wilson of Gerbil Junction, Iowa,) and you happen to be reading this, take my advice: rewatch the first two films now.
(Return of the King also contains the only deviation from the books that I object to — a matter, for the sake of Mr. Wilson, I will discuss in the comments, so as to keep spoilers off this page.)
Well, enough carping — Jackson gives me three of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen and all I can do is bitch. Seriously: Return of the King is, like its predecessors, a wondrous and enthralling experience. Even at three-and-a-half-hours I never felt it to be overlong or ponderous, and at times I found myself marveling that such a lengthy film could move at a breakneck pace. And, having read the book, I knew how things wrapped up, so I had no objection to the plethora of endings.
The Fellowship Of The Ring will always be my favorite of the three, simply because I vividly remember the moment when amazement washed over me halfway through the film as i realized they weren’t going to screw it up after all. And then Two Towers came along and somehow managed to be every bit as good. Return of the King didn’t exceed my expectations, per se, but it was every bit as good as I’d hoped. And taken as a whole, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is surely one of the finest achievements in the history of cinema. Jackson deserves ever single award he is bound to receive.
Note: The comments are not spoiler-free.
I think the reason i didn’t like movie three was the unbalance of drama vs. fighting in the three movies. and this plays into why its a better single movie then three parts–> we spend so much time having aragorn worry about becoming his ancestor (oh, i can’t destroy the ring, my blood won’t let me, i will fail) in movie one, and then in movie three, he ups and becomes the king to kick ass. movie two we see him do whats right, lead men, fight the good fight, yadda yadaa yadda. so its a nice character development for him i think over the course of three movies. its not just boom, hes the guy that is the king and kicks ass. he changes who he thinks he is and evolves internally for himself. so, by splitting things like that up into drama/internal-conflict (goes to movie one) and fighting/external-conflict (goes to movie three) and we’ll connect them with a little of both (into movie two)-…by splitting things up like that, it makes each “movie” have to stand on its own as the 1) character-based 3) fighting finale and 2) joining/empire-strikes back type film. which i think hurts movie three. it was boring. not so much as watching tennis, but it had nothing on 1 and 2. the battle scenese sure did a lot but can you consume that much? helm’s deep seems better to me.
in the third movie there was a problem of scale. so we need to fight the badguys’ huge army. we can’t do that, we dont have enough men
then what follows is the most amazing defensive city that you can’t imagine what force would bring it down is attacked by a force that, well, yup, that would bring that city down. now the good guys with the horses are gonna attack, but how could they break the lines of that many bad guys? oh, yup, ok, thats enough horses, wow! ok, what could the bad guys do against all those good guys? i mean that was a lot of bad guys that just got the crapped kicked out of them. oh wow, ya, that many olephants would do it..wow! wow! ok, what could stop all those bad guys? oh wow! thats a lot of dead army! wow! its not a wow at that point though, its a ‘hummph’.
and whats up with the dead people effect? was that just a wind-particle effect they used colored green? that was miserable. up close the dead king looked neat, but attacking the people they looked little better then a particle wind.
i thought the discussion here on the end of the volcano was good. but having gollum just fall in seems kinda weak to me. maybe it worked in the book, i dont know. i am sure i would have thought in the movie that it was rather weak. and the philosophical point about allowing the ring (and the desires it creates/exists-as) to destroy itself also seems rather weak. so, it was really in the ring itself not to survive? seems a bit preachy to me. its no real story about gollum’s greed for the ring then destroying it… either with the fight or without we get that the greed and conflict broughta bout by the ring destorys it..got that, but by allowing an intercessor’s conflict help out complicates it just a bit more to seem entertaining philosophically speaking. w/o that then its just a sunday sermon, thanks, but no.
as for that olephant/legolas seen. you guys thought that was great?! luke vs at-at was way better. the cgi-flipping that legolas had to do didn’t have much weight to them itseemed to me. compare that with the cool horsemount in the second movie and i feel the horsemount was much more realistic. i felt his weight flipping around. witht he olephant mounting, all i saw was a ninja teleporting around. persoal perception i’m sure matters on that call.
You know, it sure would be nice if people who wish to post long, drawn out opinions and commentaries would run their long, drawn out essays through a spell-checker first.
I really didn’t like the scuffle at the destruction of the ring, *even* if you read it more or less that way. My main reason is that the huge cliche it instantiates totally drains the moral grandeur from the event. Going over the cliff only to (surprise!) appear later, hanging on? Friend shouting “Grab my hand!”?? Having the time for seemingly leisurely reflection on whether to attempt the hand-grab??? Puh-leeze. The scene should have been played with Frodo’s pride coming over him in a rush, and suddenly (to us and him), being stripped from him with the ring, in a moment of sudden pain, humility, and relief.
The films were great, but the action-flick cliches hurt the latter two quite a bit for me. How many times do we see a hero seemingly helpless before a villain, only to be saved suddenly by an ally from behind? It felt like about 10 in ROTK alone. The battles would have been even greater without that junk.
You know, it sure would be nice if people who wish to post long, drawn out opinions and commentaries would run their long, drawn out essays through a spell-checker first.
“Drawn-out” is hyphenated. Just, you know, FYI.
Well, I’m gonna ignore the preceding conversation as it confuses me. Although not entirely: I totally agree with Adam’s opinion that sending a troupe of Ninja-Elves ™ to Helm’s Deep in TTT was, uh, surprising. It violates one of the big themes of the book (“The time of the elves is done, the alliances of old are broken, this is the time of mankind”) — and I simply don’t understand why. It would have been easy to aviod and doesn’t add drama.
Frodo grappling with Gollum for the ring was just lame. When he went over the edge and he & Sam had the subsequent “Grab my hand/don’t let go” sequence, I felt like I was watching Murtaugh and Riggs in Lethal Weapon. Bad choice.
I also didn’t like the film’s interpretation of Eowyn. She was far, *far* more kickass in the books – much more Princess Leia and less Princess Barbie – and while I thought her trembling fear was appropriate in confronting the Witch King, it would have been much more meaningful to me if she’d been presented as a kickass warrior from her first scene. Instead, she seemed much more like a scared girly-girl, a wilting flower on a cross-dressing suicide mission. Another bad decision.
I could have done with far fewer Sweeping Shots of EpicBattle! and more scenes of Faramir/Eomer/Merry. Hell, even some shots of them fighting would’ve been nice.
I miss the SotS – it’s one of my favorite parts of RotK – but I can understand its omission. I think they should have insisted on filming it somehow, though, and putting it in the extended version.
That said, I thought the film rocked in many ways and made me cry, but I think that was much more because of my emotional investment in the books, and less so because the film interpretation was so unbelievably good.
“Drawn-out” is hyphenated. Just, you know, FYI.
i spit my soda when i read that
:0)
Was anyone else bothered by the fact that Gollum survived for a few seconds in molten lava? He would have certainly incinerated far before he hit the surface. Furthermore, it bothered me that Legolas could climb up arrows, arrows!, that supported his weight while attacking the olephaunt. And one more, what the hell was he standing on while shooting his arrows from the beast’s rump? I’m not saying these are valid worries, I just wonder if I’m alone in thinking these things.
Yes, I know it’s a movie.
I thought the post about spell-checking a drawn out (sic) post was a joke since the name was Pedantic “Missfit” (sic).
Legolas was an elf. He could also walk on unpacked snow ala FotR. Elves are different, weight-wise.
Okay, one last comment, honest:
I figured out what really irked me about the prolonged Crack o’ Doom sequence. It’s not the fighting, so much as the hanging-off-the-edge. Because the fighting can be thought of as just the lust for the Ring at work, but the cliffhanging was undeniably heroic: Sam was being his usual loyal self, and Frodo had to finally turn away from the Ring and give one last push for life. As has been pointed out, in fact, it’s possible to view Frodo’s turning-away as being a catalyst for the Ring’s final destruction.
But what I loved so much about the Tolkien ending was that there wasn’t an inch of heroism at the last. For all the Herculean effort that went into getting the Ring there, it was only the self-destructiveness of evil and maybe the hand of Eru that won out inside the cave. That pure moment of anti-humanism, then, was spoiled by the addition of not just a heroic act, but a Hollywood super-cheese heroic act.
You know, I’m really curious now – in the history of people falling off cliffs, how many have actually been able to grab onto the side, just within arm’s reach?
Let me just say that Gollum should have basically evaporated well before he hit the lava. That bothered me.
I guess I’m joining this way late. I just wanted to say that reading all this confirms for me that my boyfriend’s right and I am a hopeless dork. Much has been made of the elves coming to helm’s deep and whether that sucked or not, but nobody has really assessed the real price of that: By pointlessly sending Eomer away (with about 100 men in the first scene, which magically becomes 2000 when he appears at the end of TTT to save them) in the beginning of the movie (instead of imprisoning him), they effectively remove my favorite character from the movie. In TTT, Eomer is a fabulous character, providing a great insight into these “men” that we hear about so much in the movie and yet seldom see. Uneducated, ignorant, but valiant and good-hearted, he is an excellent parallel to Aragorn– another man stepping up to fill the role set for him by his ancestors. He is on a different scale than Aragorn but their macho camaraderie at Helm’s Deep adds a missing human element to the battle, and his antagonism with Gimli that is resolved when Gimli saves his life at the causeway in Helm’s Deep, and the banter about learning the praise of a fair lady under the loving strokes of a dwarf’s axe… Even the scene in the Houses of Healing where Aragorn diagnoses what’s wrong with Eowyn, and Eomer sits absolutely dumbfounded realizing that he has never once really actually understood his sister in all their years of life… They make much of Theoden and Eowyn’s relationship, but there’s never any relationship between the siblings. Because Eomer doesn’t make a full character. maybe it was union rules or something, like he couldn’t have more than four lines and three closeups…
Sigh.
They replace that with a disturbingly mincing Haldir in armor and some mugging around with Gimli, and nobody else feels massively let down by it? Eomer gets about two lines in the movies, and some screaming and improbable Oliphant-bashing (look, now he’s got a magic spear, oh look, now he’s an archer), and by the time you get to the coronation scene in RoTK you’ve forgotten who the shouldery guy in the wig is. They don’t even explain that he’s Theoden’s heir, so what he’s doing there isn’t even made clear to non-fangirl-geeks.
All this just proves that we all have our own axes to grind and really, those of us who are book-geeks are best-off if we consider the movies as a lovely visual aid to our appreciation of the stories. Seriously, the movies did help me to uncover a great number of themes that existed in the books, that I had skimmed over in my hundreds of rereadings. Bilbo’s tearful apology to Frodo in FoTR makes me cry every time I see it. And I have to say that the casting and indeed, all the characterizations and visuals were absolutely spot-on and inspiring. Except that they made the Elves so gay that they felt obligated to show them kicking ass to prove that they weren’t really that mincing and light-loafered. And had to sacrifice the Third Marshal of the Mark to do it. Grmmmble.
sadly, the movies have also served to expose to me just what a tremendous dork I am. :) I hadn’t really known this was all lurking deep inside me until people started discussing it… and I realized I CARED. Tragic.