Great film, but where's Saruman?

Rating: Null/10 (12 April 2004)

Contains Spoiler Picking up where the uneven "Two Towers" left off, Frodo & Sam are still heading for Mordor and Mt. Doom to destroy the ring, but guide Golem is both a help and a hindrance. Aragorn, Gandalf, Ghimli and Legalos catch up with Merry & Pippin and they snatch up an orb that Pippin, being as stupid as he is, looks into, sees Sauron and tricks the evil lord that he's the ring bearer. This leads Gandalf to take Pippin to Gondor to talk to the steward, Lord Denethor, father of Boromir and Faramir, who is pretty much letting his kingdom get trampled into the Earth due to depression and will not let the rightful king, Aragorn, take the throne. Pippin and Gandalf signal Rohan anyway and King Theoden rallies his men to come to the rescue. Golem tricks Frodo into thinking Sam's his enemy and he sends Sam away while Faramir is sent off to die in battle against the orcs by his demented dad. Gandalf beats up the despairing Denethor and rallies the men to defend their city against the on coming orcs, led by a smarmy pale orc who later wets his pants when the Riders of Rohan show up and trample their forces. The Riders of Rohan are in turn trampled by a herd of monster elephants and their riders, but later rescued by Aragorn and his army of the undead, while Eowyn (Miranda Otto) slays the head honcho Nazgul, but alas, Theoden meets his end on the battle field. Frodo FINALLY figures out that Golem was playing him for a sap when the little monster traps him inside a cave where a giant monster spider tries to eat him. Frodo is later rescued by Sam and they continue the journey while Aragorn rallies the last of the armies of men to distract Sauron's forces. At the end, Frodo is corrupted by the ring and refuses to throw it in, and is attacked by Golem, who bites off his finger in order to get the ring back for himself and later falls into the lava, destroying the ring, Sauron, Mordor and himself. Even though Frodo treated him like dirt, Sam saves Frodo from falling into the lava and they are later rescued by Gandalf and the giant Eagles. Aragorn is made king, Arwen (Liv Tyler) becomes his queen, Eowyn hooks up with Faramir, Eomer becomes King of Rohan, Ghimli & Legalos finally admit that they're friends, the Hobbits return home, and Frodo later sails off to the undying lands with Bilbo and Gandalf while the others live mostly happily ever after in the Shire.

Okay, there were a few things I didn't like, even though this one is vastly superior to "Two Towers". They should have shown us what happened to Saruman (Christopher Lee) the main reprsentative of the forces of evil in the first two films, cut down on Arwen (I'm not a big Liv Tyler person anyway) and probably cut down on the battles and made the ending shorter while leaving in more room for things like Eowyn's relationship with Faramir and the grief of Eomer when he thinks his sister's dead. And alas, there's too much Golem here and not enough Treebeard.
But the rest of the film is great. Beautiful locations, stunning CGI, and a solid cast. Bernard Hill and Miranda Otto deserved so much more publicity for their performances as King Theoden and Eowyn that it's a crime that they're both over shadowed by Liv Tyler, who I now believe was simply used as a battering ram to propel the marketing. David Wenham finally shows us Faramir's true sides through his dysfunctional relationship with his dad Sean Astin shines above all the other Hobbits - even Elijah Wood's Frodo - as Sam. Not that Wood doesn't deserve credit for his portrayal of Frodo. Ian McKellan and Viggo Mortensen are still good in their roles as well. Orlando Bloom is still little more than back ground scenery as Legalos, but he does have a cool kill on the monster elephant, and John Rhys Davies is better as Ghimli here than he was in "Two Towers". It's a shame that they cut out the scenes that would have developed Karl Urban's Eomer though.

But all in all, this is a grand film and deserves all the Oscar nods.