Mind-blowing

Rating: 10/10 (16 January 2005)

The Return of the King is my personal favourite part of Peter Jackson's amazing adaptation of J R R Tolkien's epic, though only by a narrow margin. The three films are in a different league to anything else I've seen. I wasn't even remotely a Tolkien fan until The Fellowship of the Ring first screened - now I read his work avidly, and that's entirely down to Peter Jackson.
I (slightly) prefer RoTK to the other two masterpieces for two main reasons.
First, the scale of it is even greater than that of The Two Towers. After seeing the battle of Helm's Deep, I didn't think I'd ever witness a better battle scene on screen. Then came the siege of Minas Tirith in RoTK. While not quite matching the sheer horror of the night attack of 10,000 savage Uruk-hai (considering the meagre defences), the Minas Tirith battle is just mind-blowing in scale. The relentless march of 100,000s of Mordor orcs, supported by huge mountain trolls, catapults, Haradrim and the undead Nazgul on wings... is simply mind-blowing to behold the first time you see it.
Second, this is the concluding part, and therefore more emotionally involving and satisfying. You would have to be stone-hearted indeed not to be moved somewhat by the mutual friendship and love between Frodo and Sam - and the ultimate fruition of their courage.
Returning for a moment to the great battle sequence of this film, I would have liked some dialogue between Gandalf and the Witch-King of Angmar (as in the book) but I can forgive this small thing. There are other differences between all three books and the films, some minor and some quite major, but none really damage the films all that much. For instance, I'm actually glad that Jackson omitted Tom Bombadil from TFoTR - a major character but one I personally find quite tedious.
Other highlights in this film include Frodo's passing through Shelob's lair, the fall of Osgiliath, a great scene at Minas Morgul where the Witch-King first unleashes his vast army, and Frodo's final arrival at Mount Doom.
In short, like the other two films, this is not just great but in a totally different class to the majority of films out there. As for people who hated all three movies, I can only guess that there is something dead inside them - the childlike capacity for wonder and awe, plus the willingness to suspend disbelief, that is required to get the most out of this type of story. Some people just hear the word 'orc' and become offended by what they imagine to be subject matter beneath them.