Depth

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2003)

Spoilers herein.
This raises the bar on production values, as it certainly is competently made, say, compared to the `Star Wars' stuff. It seems oddly paced, lacking a rhythm, and more importantly lacking the patina of magic that colored the first two. In fact, everything seems brighter this time out.
Unlike the battle of the second, they have decided to not have any movie jokes, like the surfer/warrior who winks at the camera. But there is still a variety in tone from place to place as if different directors were involved. I suppose that's true.
I remarked on the earlier films that they innovated primarily in how they use the vertical dimension. This third film is even more competent and extreme in that regard. They knew it was a discriminator and exploited it. Unfortunately, the towers and cities and mountain gates all have an unnatural sameness to them, they are photographed with huge vertical sweeps. Even the first ending where everyone bows to the hobbits and there is the obligatory `helicopter' shot, it goes shockingly far beyond what one expects. The way it pulls back fast and swoops reminds that we are used to an eye that is constrained by the aerodynamics of light helicopters.
Not so here. When this is considered in hindsight, I'm pretty sure that the high production values won't be noticed; that all the effects and conventions here  especially the battle scenes  will be seen as borrowed, all except for the exhilarating use of height. That's worth watching. Magic of its own.
That magic is enough to carry this project for me. It is clearly Jackson's intent to move his camera in great vertical arcs, usually in ways that no physical camera could. That gives us a fantastic eye. Just a few hours later, I saw `The Lion King' again and noticed that although they were never constrained by physics, they always moved the `camera' in ways we have seen in ordinary `real' films. That's because `Lion' wanted to look real while `Return' wanted to seem ultrareal.
Ian McKellen has always puzzled me, he's sort of a working man's John Gielgud, an engineer of the spoken word. Here, he stoops to Alec Guiness' role. A sad way to cap a career.
Ted's Evaluation: 3 of 3  Worth watching