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Poster (c) New Line Cinema
Continuing where The Two Towers left off, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) is carrying the ring, whose powers, besides corrupting those who have it, are never shown in this epic (which would have been a nice reminder to people like myself who haven’t really even thought of the series since the last one). He is accompanied by his fellow hobbit Sam (Sean Astin) and weird former-hobbit Gollum/Smeagol (Andy Serkis) to destroy the ring in the fires of Mount Doom, the only place where it can be destroyed. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), a human, Legolas (Orlando Bloom), an elf, and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), a dwarf, go looking for Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), two other hobbits who are part of the broken fellowship that was made to carry the ring to its death. There’s a couple more sub-plots, which bloat out this three-hour twenty-minute epic.
I think the main reason that Return of the King is the best in the trilogy is because its main fight scene isn’t overdone and isn’t that long. Unlike The Two Towers, it was never boring. And, instead of just a bunch of computer generated people fighting, there were also computer generated elephants stomping on the computer generated people that were fighting. It was something new, not just swordfighting, which can get very boring if you’re forced to watch it for half an hour.
As Peter Jackson said in the MAD magazine parody “The Bored of the Rings: The 2+ Hours”, “I have learned to speak fluent Elvish. The only thing I haven’t learned is the word ‘cut’.” I agree. It is amazing how a mainstream audience can sit through a long movie such as this, and it is unnecessarily long. As I’ve said with the other movies in the series, many of the too-many subplots could have been taken out. Although it may not have been true to Tolkein’s original books, books are often truncated down for movies. With that, it may have been easier to sit through all three. But, amazingly enough, this one didn’t seem that long, except for the endings (which I’ll get to later).
There seems to be certain rules that the Lord of the Rings moves must follow. Every character must die at least once. However, the good guys can mysteriously come back to life, sometimes with a name change (as in Gandalf’s color change). Half of the excellent cinematography must be spent on showing us that it is not being shot inside of a soundstage, and the other half must be spent on grotesque close-ups of uncharacterized Orcs that look and speak like Yoda. Towns can be randomly placed on huge hills.
Return of the King is a very riveting experience. Because this is like nothing else, you cannot be certain that the ring is actually going to be destroyed. That, since you’ve been with these characters for nine hours, you’re basically yelling at the screen what you want to happen.
The romantic subplot (or subplots, I’m really not sure) are really unnecessary. I didn’t remember who these people were, and, yet again, they just come in randomly. To tell the truth, I don’t really care that Aragorn loves this person, and she doesn’t love back, or vice versa. It’s little things like that that make the movie a little less enjoyable. There’s about three women in the movie, and yet they’re the thing the average movie goer doesn’t like about the movie.
Towards the end of the movie, I thought it to be directed by Steven Spielberg. There are about five false endings to it. If I can recall to last night correctly, after each, the entire audience was about to get up and leave after each one. In fact, the person I was sitting next to said, after the final ending, “Is it finally over?” She loved the movie, but the endings don’t do the movie justice.
The real strong point of the movie isn’t the special effects to make Gollum (who went from lovable fool in The Two Towers to just annoying in Return of the King), nor the battle sequences, but Sean Astin’s acting. Although he is a hobbit, he still portrayed human emotions, and made him the character in the movie I cared about the most. Wood seems to have taken way too many eyedrops; I don’t recall seeing him blink once. Ian McKellan, as Gandalf, does barely wizarding, making the fact that he is a wizard a moot point.
I was surprised by Return of the King. Instead of something mediocre like I was expecting, it turns out to be one of the better movies of the year.
Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and frightening images.
Review Date: December 21, 2003