Defies Gravity

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2003)

Three hours of lifting and holding an audience off its seat. Twenty minutes to set them back down on a gentle landing that is unlikely to be forgotten. Return of the King takes off from the point of its prequels' promises, covers the bet and then goes on to payoff far in excess of expectation.
I entered the theater waiting to be disappointed. The Fellowship, in its original theatrical cut, seemed to glance off of Tolkein's material. Loved it thoroughly, but thought the characters to be thinly drawn. Frankly, I'm not sure that I felt deep concern for the hobbits' plight at prequel's end. The Two Towers did a better job of taking the audience into the persons of Aragon, Frodo and Gandalf. But still, I did not think it was enough.
Director Peter Jackson played me. He knew he had his audience hooked. But he also knew that he would have a tough time of building to a crescendo with seemingly ultimate battle after ultimate battle. In Return of the King, he takes off from the first moment to tell us about the reality of Smeagol. The nuances of this computer-generated creature are unnerving to say the least. Elrond makes his case with his daughter the best he can and relents. Aragon faces his future with palpable angst. Eowyn, Gandalf, Theoden, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, and, yes, even Gimli have risen above the halftones of character originally portrayed in the earlier releases. And by movie's end, we deeply cared about the fate of Frodo and Sam.
RotK was worth the three year and longer wait. Now, how about the Hobbit?