Return of the King: a few observations
Jan. 2nd, 2004 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinI finally saw this... It may be the immediate effect of seeing it in a full theater, but I'd agree with most reviewers (and with Peter Jackson) that it's the best installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a fitting cap for the whole project.
My one substantial criticism of the movie, as a movie rather than as a Tolkien adaptation (on which topic I'm really not your man, having last read Return of the King sometime around 1989) has to do with the time sequence when Frodo and Sam are slogging through Mordor and everyone else is at the Black Gate. Time seems to be passing at wildly different rates while the scenes intercut. Based even on what we've seen in the movies, getting from the edge of Mordor to the doorway on Mount Doom ought to be a tremendous undertaking, but it all seems to happen while the massed armies of the good guys are standing there at the gate. Something like this happened in The Two Towers as well, with Merry and Pippin in Fangorn while the battle of Helm's Deep was going on, but it didn't matter so much; here there are specific events that are supposed to be simultaneous. It will be interesting to see how the extended edit manages this.
I'd also have done the crucial sequence at the Crack of Doom differently, with no intercuts, no music, and a greater sense of confusion and happenstance; but that's more a matter of taste, and Jackson's version does the job.
My two favorite moments were actually special effects: the lighting of the signal beacons between Gondor and Rohan (helped tremendously by Howard Shore's single best piece of music in the whole series: I hadn't liked the Lord of the Rings score all that much previously, but he really delivers there); and the charge of the oliphaunts, which is the most viscerally scary thing I've seen on screen in quite a while. But the actors all acquit themselves well, too; Sean Astin and Billy Boyd have their big moments in this one, and Andy Serkis's Gollum is, if anything, even better here than in The Two Towers.
I didn't begrudge the movie its controversial multiple endings, since they have to conclude an epic that runs ten hours even in theatrical form, and I was well aware of how much after the climax had to be omitted even so. The bedside reunion was a little overdone, but it wouldn't have been finished without the Grey Havens.
My one substantial criticism of the movie, as a movie rather than as a Tolkien adaptation (on which topic I'm really not your man, having last read Return of the King sometime around 1989) has to do with the time sequence when Frodo and Sam are slogging through Mordor and everyone else is at the Black Gate. Time seems to be passing at wildly different rates while the scenes intercut. Based even on what we've seen in the movies, getting from the edge of Mordor to the doorway on Mount Doom ought to be a tremendous undertaking, but it all seems to happen while the massed armies of the good guys are standing there at the gate. Something like this happened in The Two Towers as well, with Merry and Pippin in Fangorn while the battle of Helm's Deep was going on, but it didn't matter so much; here there are specific events that are supposed to be simultaneous. It will be interesting to see how the extended edit manages this.
I'd also have done the crucial sequence at the Crack of Doom differently, with no intercuts, no music, and a greater sense of confusion and happenstance; but that's more a matter of taste, and Jackson's version does the job.
My two favorite moments were actually special effects: the lighting of the signal beacons between Gondor and Rohan (helped tremendously by Howard Shore's single best piece of music in the whole series: I hadn't liked the Lord of the Rings score all that much previously, but he really delivers there); and the charge of the oliphaunts, which is the most viscerally scary thing I've seen on screen in quite a while. But the actors all acquit themselves well, too; Sean Astin and Billy Boyd have their big moments in this one, and Andy Serkis's Gollum is, if anything, even better here than in The Two Towers.
I didn't begrudge the movie its controversial multiple endings, since they have to conclude an epic that runs ten hours even in theatrical form, and I was well aware of how much after the climax had to be omitted even so. The bedside reunion was a little overdone, but it wouldn't have been finished without the Grey Havens.