Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen)
Hobbits and wizards and dark lords, oh my! We come to the third instalment of the Lord of the Rings saga with high expectations. The groundwork has been laid with the stunning fantasy world previously introduced in The Fellowship of the Ring, and the epic battle scenes unleashed in The Two Towers singlehandedly set a new standard in film action sequences. While The Return of the King may not be the best title in the stupefying trilogy, it nevertheless manages to satisfy many, if not all, of the high expectations it will have inherited in conjunction with its much heralded, frenzied opening. This is a series that ends on a high note.
By now, the world knows the films are based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s much-beloved literary works, which helped make the fantasy genre a popular and lucrative market. In order for the novel to be condensed into what has essentially become a nine-hour film, director Peter Jackson has had to make some key creative decisions as to what to include, what to leave out, and, most importantly, what existing passages in the book had the potential to be fleshed out and expanded to make for a more entertaining work. Tolkien's tendency to condense epic battles into one or two paragraphs would never hold any weight from a cineaste's standpoint. This is where The Return of the King is a special treat. For, while the most devoted of Tolkien fans will no doubt have issue with some of Jackson’s subjective choices, there can be little argument that the end result, replete with the series' most vast and expansive battle sequences to date, has yielded a far more accessible and successful approach to the material than could have been imagined.
At the conclusion of The Two Towers, two heroic halflings named Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) were being led by the anemic creature Gollum to the dreaded Mount Doom to cast a magical ring into the lava fire from whence it came. These hobbits slowly start to become possessive about the ring, falling more enraptured with its evil charm. This will inevitably lead to a final confrontation between good and evil. Meanwhile, the noble ranger Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) have regrouped the remaining forces on Middle Earth and are preparing for a final showdown against the orc forces of the evil Sauron. Gandalf and Pippin (Billy Boyd) travel to Minas Tirith in the hopes of convincing its ruler Denethor (John Noble) to spring into action. Too bad he has a nasty case of inherent madness that prevents him from helping the cause. Meanwhile, Aragorn and cohorts Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) venture down a haunted path to try to enlist the help of the living dead.
There are many other subplots as well. Eowyn (Miranda Otto) and Arwen (Liv Tyler) will go through their own life-and-death experiences, and only one will win the heart and hand of Aragorn in the end. Frodo and Sam encounter an irritable monster spider at the gates of Mount Doom and come face-to-face with a band of irritable orc brigands. The neglected Faramir (David Wenham) is about to get burned -- both figuratively and literally -- by his own father, despite one last heroic stand against an oncoming army of thousands. King Theoden (Bernard Hill) and Elrond (Hugo Weaving) must make some key decisions that will potentially affect the battle for Middle Earth, not to mention their immediate families. And the aging Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) discovers he needs a personal resolution for his previous adventures. These subplots all ebb and flow amidst the backdrop of some of the biggest and loudest movie moments in recent years. Thundering "oliphants", crippling catapults, mammoth battering rams and enormous ogres are among the numerous onscreen spectacles. All are executed with triumphant realism.
Having seen the film twice now, my favourite moments occur when the audience gets strung along, like willing puppets eager to be won over. There are some real edge-of-your-seat nailbiters thrown in for good measure, and hearing the gasps of shock and horror, particular in one specific, magnificently executed scene, are undoubtedly worth the price of admission. But there is also a wave of emotional resonance that arguably was missing from Tolkien's books. Few big budget blockbusters can pull off this kind of dramatic oomph without coming across as artificial. The Lord of the Rings correctly assumes its viewers will spot contrivances and egregious manipulation a mile away. That's why we freely give in to the sentimentality when it comes; it does not feel forced, formulaic, or sloppy.
The Return of the King concludes a journey which Jackson and a cast and crew of hundreds began several years ago in New Zealand. In a way, the rigours of the conclusion to that filming somehow indirectly manifests itself in the movie's lengthy yet necessary epilogue. Despite an unfortunate tendency to insert -- for the first time in the series -- a handful of dissolves in the picture's final 30 minutes, the dénouement is the cinematic equivalent of finishing the last chapter of an enthralling novel. Many of the actors have now become fully realized characters in our eyes, and with the completion of their adventures, we feel we have accompanied them along the way. The fate of the ring may be sealed, but the magic at work here will definitely live on for decades to come.
