Good but massively over-rated!

Rating: 7/10 (29 April 2009)

A lot of people looking on this page will thoroughly disagree and disregard my comments but I feel justified in saying that the Lord of the Rings trilogy and this final part in particular are possibly some of the most over-rated films of all time! I hasten to add that I do like the films and rate them as very good 7 or 8 out of 10 but I just do not see them as the 10/10 all time greats that other people see them as. I love fantasy stories and films in general, I just find these films to be far less impressive than most people appear to think they are. The main thing in the trilogy I find absolutely impressive is Gollum (Andy Serkis). The motion capture performance by Serkis is genius and the CGI character was the best up to that time. Also Gollum is a great character, hilarious, sometimes creepy and fascinating. Also you cannot fault Christopher Lee as Saruman, Ian McKellen as Gandalf and there are other good performances too.
Most people who loved the books or loves this kind of story understandably lap the films up enthusiastically. An epic, massive budget presentation of one of the most famous and loved fantasy stories is somewhat irresistible to anyone who likes fantasy stories at all. However, I was a little bit underwhelmed on my first viewing of the films and have remained so with each viewing. They are not bad films at all. They have great spectacle, have some epic action, some scenes with effective humour or emotion and some fine actors but there is a lot I find disappointing. LOTR would be extremely difficult to adapt to film for anybody and I don't think these films do it as well as they could. There is a lot of time wasted unnecessarily and important aspects of story and character are left out or underdeveloped.
I find Peter Jackson generally a far from 100% successful director. His version of King Kong is poor and shows his faults even a lot more than the LOTR trilogy. All these Jackson made films are a bit overblown and a little pretentiously directed. Extremely long shots of characters gazing into camera, at each other or into the distance occur so often it is incredible. A great director does not need words to tell a story or convey emotion and the face and eyes of an actor can be used to huge effect. But most shots of characters without dialogue in this trilogy fail to make me feel anything other than they are wasting time! Frodo (Elijah Wood) especially just gazes or gawps for what seems like ages without making me connect with his feelings and without moving the character or story on at all.
CGI is the real king in these films and as impressive as many scenes are, it never thrills as much as the real scenery or real action in some older epics. The epic spectacle is therefore not enough to carry me away on its own, it requires great storytelling. Some great storytelling does occur in these films but I do not feel Tolkein's story or characters are done full justice due to Jackson wasting time on 'pretty', glossy, showy film making. A real efficiency and supreme skill was needed to get the most from the source material and this is lacking. For instance, Return of the King misses out important aspects of Aragorn, Feramir and Saruman's stories and I find Frodo comes across as rather petulant, annoying and lacking heroism. Samwise comes across a lot better.
A great villain completes a great story. Sauron appears a feeble 'villain' throughout the trilogy. A flaming eye is not exactly Darth Vader! Tolkein created a villain difficult to show effectively on screen and Jackson's presentation of Sauron fails to convey threat or menace at all. Saruman is a good villain and is brilliantly acted by Christopher Lee but has totally insufficient screen time, particularly in the final story where he goes straight to DVD!
Overall The Return of the King is easily the weakest of the trilogy for my tastes featuring faults I have listed above, rather overblown CGI action and an extraordinarily dragged out ending.
Yes these films are very good but for me they are nowhere near the classics they are reputed to be or that they could have been if perfectly directed.