resurrectionsong

December 19, 2003

LOTR: Return of the King--Not Quite a Review

I saw Return of the King yesterday. It was a wonderful movie and I enjoyed it immensely. I will even be seeing it again in the theater just to enjoy the grandeur of it on the big screen. Undoubtedly, this is the best trilogy ever filmed. And, no, I'm not simply talking about movies with sequels--I'm talking about that wonderful thing, the intentional trilogy. Sequels are simply the continuation of characters and, sometimes, situations. Trilogies are a single story told in three discrete parts.

Tolkien, of course, considered the Lord of the Rings to be one single work, not three separate books. This is one of the things that made it difficult to film but much more cohesive, in many ways, than other similar works.

What about Star Wars? As much as I loved the original Trilogy, Return of the Jedi had ewoks. 'Nuf said.

The following, though, is a list of reasons that I still enjoyed the second movie of the trilogy more.

Too many melodramatic moments in both this and the first installment.
Could Elijah stop beetling his brow and looking so damned sad. How about a hint of determination or broken spirit. Until I saw the movies, the first word that I would use to describe Frodo would not have been "simpering." (As a note, though, Sam really kicked butt in this one. I was proud of the little guy; in many ways, he really was the hero of the films.)
The special effects at certain points were a touch of a let down. All the fire effects where they used digital fire instead of the real thing simply looked fake, for instance.
Continuing that theme, Legolas assault on the big elephant creature was a little too heavy on the CGI. Cinematically, it also recalled Luke's assault on the AT-AT a bit much. I kept expecting Legolas to break out his light saber, cut open the belly of the beast, and toss in a thermal detonator.
Further continuing the theme, the army of the dead was weak. The undead pirate crew in Pirates of the Caribean were more impressive and scary. The long shots were especially disappointing.
Too many longing shots between the hobbits for my taste. I was starting to get odd feelings about the relationships between those little guys.
Spoiler: Skip this one if you haven't seen it and are a fan of the books. The ending without the Harrowing of the Shire is a bit disappointing. While many of the changes in characters and timelines weren't a problem for me, this bit did disappoint me.

For all that, I think that this trilogy was beautifully done. It maintained the spirit of the books where it couldn't stay completely true to them, much of the acting was beautiful, the sets were tremendous, the costumes and special effects were, mostly, phenomenal. In this movie, one of my favorite parts was the opening with its telling of Gollum's downfall. Disturbing, creepy, and perfect.

For fantasies, the bar has been raised. What Peter Jackson gave us will be hard to best.

Posted by zombyboy at December 19, 2003 09:38 AM | TrackBack

Comments

By fire effect to you mean the beakons? Because that was pretty weak. Kind of sad when a Balrog is more visually believable than fire on a hill.

I also agree with you that Frodo's characterization was off. To me it was less the simpering than the gullibility, though. In the books it's clear that Frodo knows Gollum is up to no good and isn't hoodwinked by his act.

And the kids (devil spawn) behind me seemed to think the elephant thing was remeniscent of Star Wars ("Dude! This is totally like that one part of Star Wars. Which one was it?" grr)

Posted by: Julia at December 19, 2003 01:54 PM

I was equally unimpressed with the beacon fire. I quickly thought WTF? and then put it out of my mind. I will admit that the Matrix and new Star Wars debacles left me with a pre-disposition to LOTR: ROTK. I'm probably willing to overlook things like the beacon fires simply because the movie didn't suck (and there were no Ewoks). Also, I never read the books (I tried many years ago but I found Tolkein to be very wordy) so I wasn't disappointed by the areas in which the movies strayed from the books.

Posted by: StumpJumper at December 19, 2003 02:57 PM

I agree with all your points except #7. I don't know how they could have done the Scouring of the Shire. The movie was already over three hours, and that with a good chunk coming after the big climax, like in the book. Unless they cut out a lot of other really good material, that would have meant a four-hour movie, with like an hour after the big climax. Consider they would have had to put in a lot of additional material about Saruman just to understand what was going on, and I really think Jackson made the right choice there. Just like Tom Bombadil- cool in the book, but not necessary to the central plot, and just distracting in an already very long and full movie.

Posted by: Matt Powell at December 20, 2003 02:34 PM

Jackson won me over with this movie. As a devoted fan of Tolkein's books, it took all three movies to win me over to all the character inventions, switches subplotting and re-writing of his films.

She-Lob did not win me over though, it was a very plain spider - unemployed since work in Harry Potter films. She-Lob was supposed to be a deformed and monstrous version of a spider. Also, I missed the Witch King of Angmar from the book, whose head was a crowned jet of flame. Obviously that was one flame effect beyond the CGI team.

I saw this film last night for the first time, and plan another trip to the theater today - trusting that it is a trailer to the Extended Version. The ending in Hobbiton was so weak you have to hope they shot a good Scouring of the Shire and the murder scene between Wormtongue and Saruman. Even if I leave early it is worth the ticket price, though.

Posted by: cC at January 8, 2004 09:19 AM

The beacon fires....

I´ll admit that they weren´t quite as realistic as I´d have liked, but I thought that was a great scene!

I found it surprisingly moving and inspirational, and you really get a sense of the huge geographic scale between Gondor and Rohan (not to mention the usefulness of beacon fires in the absence of a fiber link :)

The music for that bit is my favorite track on the soundtrack (track 4, "The White Tree")..., which I feel is pretty worthy musically, for a film score.

It´s one of many scenes that Jackson emphasized (or created out of whole cloth) differently from the books, to good effect. Another change he made was more active bravery on the part of the hobbits, particularly in the first film, or which Merry and Pippin attacking the Orcs to avenge Boromir was the most memorable example for me. And did the hobbits ever kick butt against that cave troll :-)

When I first saw ROTK, I liked it the least of the three films. However, after some further thought (and a few listens to the soundtrack album) I think I´d have to say ROTK is my favorite of the three... though they´re all great IMO.

(OK, just one ObPeeve... in the coronation scene, if only Elrond didn´t look like someone´s auntie weeping at a wedding ;-)

Posted by: malc at February 13, 2004 02:04 PM