“The Return of the King” pulls the same trick two, if not three times, even after the two previous movies pulled it a couple of times each, in which during a pitched battle, just when we think all is lost, reinforcements of some kind arrive at the last moment. The only difference is that the battles keep getting enormous-er and enormous-er from one movie to the next. We get more solemn dialogue delivered with thousand-yard stares, another mad king to replace the one who regained his sanity in the previous movie, and yet another silently-going-into-battle-poised-ironically-against-soft-music-sequence. There are also plenty of opportunities to wonder when Richard Wagner is going to win a posthumous Oscar for all the soundtracks that sound just like him.
The movie is packed with PG13 violence, in which the camera jerks away just as someone pulls a sword out, or everyone dies with their backs to us. Not only is the image of bloodshed softened, but so is the meaning behind it: all the villains (save poor Gollum) can be killed without remorse or so much as a second thought. They are wholly evil, delight in slaughter for slaughter’s sake, and deserve what’s coming to them. No orc is ever seen weeping over a dying fellow. Lots of vile beasts get killed, but after watching about 6 hours of them getting butchered in the two previous films, despite 30-to-1 odds in their favor, it’s pretty hard to get worked up over them anymore. (Remember when Butch and Sundance were being chased by four or five riders, and decided it was best to run away? Those were the days.) Violence is the solution to everything in the “LOTR” universe, a sentiment that, given our current situation, will resonate with a large portion of our country.
That said, “Return of the King” is probably the best of the trilogy, at least better than “The Two Towers,” which was a three-plus hour introduction to one character (Gollum). It is the best because it is the most intimate. The friendship between Frodo and Samwise proves to be the key relationship of the film, and the poignancy to Gollum’s sad life is summed up by his last two expressions and the position in which we find him. The movie begins with a Gollum mini-movie, which is both sad and horrific, charting how he acquired the Ring and how it transformed him from cuddly dwarf-thing into a ghoul. Characters are willing to make sacrifices aplenty again and again, soldiers fight hopeless battles to buy time for others, and elfish queens giving up immortality for love. But no one sacrifices more than the noble little Hobbits. The movie’s epilogue, which does not shy away from open sentiment and soppy music, shows how they have saved their home, but by partaking in so much bloodshed and high adventure they may have lost their place in it.
So “Return of the King” is a good movie, and well worth seeing. Just get ready to hear about it more than you want and more than it deserves, to see more commercials about “the Number One Movie in America!”, to watch it lay waste to the competition at the Oscars and various other awards. Expect clones of Jackson’s scope, production design, and solemnity to hit theatres soon. Get ready to read “LOTR” and “Citizen Kane” mentioned in the same sentence on a lot of websites, and expect to hear TV announcers quote wild critical claims calling them the defining films of this generation. (What’s that say about our generation? That we are certain of the rightness of our cause, we are willing to employ violence pitilessly against those faceless masses who oppose us, that those who do not prepare for war are living in a fool’s paradise, and that technology—which does not appear in this marvel but created it—is more wondrous than anything? Yet despite all this we are just little specks of Hobbit-dom in the face of a world too big for us? There’s an English paper in that.) But, if nothing else, Jackson’s films have ensured the longevity, if not the immortality, of The Hobbit Café, and I love that place. Long live the Ring!
P.S. Somewhere in the screenwriting and research chain of command, a decision had to be made for the commander of the orc archers to yell “fire!” If you told this to a medieval archer, he would have no idea what you’re talking about, because there is no flame involved. (He would say, literally, “where’s the fire at?”) The proper term—and please correct me if I’m wrong—is “loose,” a word rarely associated with the discharge of any modern projectile. With all the work that went into these three behemoths, a simple detail like this could not have possibly been overlooked. That means that someone, somewhere, had to hem and haw over whether more audiences members would be jolted or distracted from the film over the incorrect use of the word “fire” or from an unfamiliar use of the word “loose.” I mention this not as a criticism of the film—even though it did bump me out of the movie for a second—but just because.
P.P.S. My wife says that accusing “The Return of the King” as being short on humor is a cheap shot. To which I reply, a cheap shot would be mentioning Sir Ian’s lifestyle choice in connection with how all the movie’s intense personal scenes are between men. That would be a cheap shot.
Finished December 18, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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