Why did THIS one win the Oscar?

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2004)

Fellowship of the Ring was far and away the best of the three Lord of the Rings movies, and the Academy snubbed it. The Two Towers was far less impressive, but that was understandable since the book of the Two Towers is the weakest of the original trilogy, and Jackson saved one of its best episodes, the confrontation between the hobbits and Shelob, for the third film. The third film rebounds, as it ought to have given that the third book is the best, but it does not reach the level reached by the first movie, much less by the book. Overall, Jackson did a good job, none of the movies is bad, and he deserves recognition for his work and the risks he took. It's just hard not to feel disappointed, given the huge promise of the first movie, to find that the trilogy as a whole is quite good but nowhere near great.
Certainly Jackson achieved a very impressive feat in constructing battle scenes that are even more exciting and terrifying than the excellent ones in the previous two movies. The assault of Grond on the gate of Minas Tirith, the wild charge of the Rohirrim, the confrontation between Eowyn and the Lord of the Nazgul, and the desperate clash with the Oliphaunts are probably the finest fantasy warfare sequences ever filmed, managing to be intimate and detailed while also giving a sense of the overall strategic picture of the battle. Kurosawa would have been hard put to do better.
Too, Jackson pulled a major coup by constructing a version of the climactic scene at Mount Doom that will surprise the readers of the original book without disappointing them  and it would have been very easy to go wrong at this point. And, Jackson manages a few times to do what he did with astonishing regularity in The Fellowship of the Ring: spot the dramatic moments and give them even more impact on film than they have on the printed page. His version of the scenes in the Paths of the Dead and the lighting of the beacons of Gondor are masterful.
But, Jackson has lost his eye for character; indeed, he has lost it so disastrously that I have to wonder whether his master portraits of Boromir and Gandalf in the first film were anything more than luck. This is clearest in his revolting representation of Denethor. Jackson's Denethor is a cretin: weak, craven, stupid, self-pitying, insensitive, spiteful, utterly devoid of redeeming features. No man cut from this cloth could have lasted a month as Steward of Gondor, much less raised two of the boldest warriors of Minas Tirith or pitted his will against the Dark Lord Sauron for control of a Palantir. The true story of Denethor, which Jackson misunderstood completely, is not of the crumbling of a coward, but what is infinitely more tragic, the crumbling of a brave man.
Meanwhile, Gandalf has receded into Old Testament prophet mode, and seems to have no emotions of his own whatsoever. Granted, even in the books Gandalf seems more distant and unapproachable after his reappearance, but he still had the old irritability and humor underneath. Arwen, after being used so well in the first movie, again becomes an annoying hindrance to the plot. Gimli, at least, has improved somewhat since The Two Towers; he is still being used as comic relief, but the humor is now more of a deliberately self-deprecating kind than the humiliating pratfall jokes he had to suffer through last time.
Also, I have to complain about some of the things that Jackson left out. I will concede that he was right to omit two of my favorite parts: the meeting with Ghan-buri-Ghan and the Scouring of the Shire; time was limited, and something had to be cut. (he could have omitted the Paths of the Dead too, if he'd had to, although that would have been a shame considering how well he did that sequence). But the confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch-King of Angmar at the ruins of the Gate could have been done in thirty seconds, and the parley with the Mouth of Sauron would have required less than one minute to deliver one of the dramatic high points of the whole book.
That Minas Tirith, Mount Doom, and the Grey Havens are magnificently done almost goes without saying. Art direction has been the one consistent strong point throughout this whole trilogy.
In all, The Return of the King is a good movie. Certainly far worse ones have won Oscars. I just hope that the award doesn't lead to people imagining that this is the best movie of the trilogy.
Rating: *** out of ****.
Recommendation: Go see it on a big screen. But watch The Fellowship of the Ring first.