A beautiful letdown

Rating: 4/10 (11 July 2005)

Everyone said it was great--the final piece of the puzzle--the fantastic finish--all good things must come to an end.
I found only the last part of the statement to be true. I was excited about the Return of the King. After all, it the trailers looked amazing, the CG sweeps were stunning, and what we'd been waiting for for a long time had finally come true. I was disappointed.
I have read the three Tolkien books. I have no idea why anybody would read them, but the first two movies were great--that sense of adventure, journey, comradery--all formed together to make a masterpiece. But what we can see when we look at the Return of the King, is that Peter Jackson ceases to make a movie about the characters you've grown to love, and instead shows hundreds of thousands of men and orcs duking it out for most of the movie. I found it exciting at first, and then boring. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas disappeared for most of the movie. That was a HORRIBLE directing choice. Whether it was in the books or not. What made the battle of Helm's Deep so great was you actually could feel what was going on, the dramatic course of the siege and some pretty sweet moves by our heroes. In ROTK, all you saw for most of the movie was a noisy clanging of swords and an excuse to show hundreds of thousands of men charging and dying. What a lame part of the movie. Then come the elephants. I tell you, this was where i started to feel the adrenaline. This was the type of stuff i had been waiting for. You could follow each individual story of how they brought down the elephants and everything, just like The Two Towers. But unlike TTT, where were Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas? No where to be found. Finally they show up with the ghosts, but then the ghosts kill everybody and its all over.
Lemme stop here and try to make an outline: Orcs almost take the city. Rohanians show up, thunderous charge. Beat the orcs, then come the elephants. Start losing to the elephants, then come the ghosts. The ghosts clobber everybody.
I don't know about you, but if you ask me, that sounds pretty linear. No plot twists or anything. And cutting away to Frodo and Sam didn't help anything. It didn't serve its purpose: Rekindling our excitement to see what happens next in the battle. For me, it just dragged the movie out. And Frodo and Sam's adventures were just as linear. They're just what you expected: Gollum turns on them, they go all the way to mount doom and drop the ring in. The End. It had as much drama as a soap opera, but that didn't make it exciting or keep me on the edge of my seat, like Helm's Deep in TTT did.
The final battle, on the soil of Mordor, was intended to be the final frontier--inspire teary eyes and be the final huzzah. I almost fell asleep. We had all seen it before. No plot twists, just a plain-jane battle. I like violence and enjoy a good battle, but this was just dumb. They make you sit through an entire 2 hours of battle in Minas Tirith and then pull this one on you and expect you to think its all new. Its not. Its old, linear, rubbish. Everything you expected: Battle, Frodo drops the ring in, the end.
If only it was that simple. Unfortunately, as if you haven't already seen enough, they make you sit through a good 25 minutes of endings. An ending here, an ending there. An extra ending here, and look! another ending! I would have given a standing ovation, despite the laughability of the movie, if they had the courage to cut the movie right after the eagles came and carried Frodo and Sam away. It would have been perfect. On one hand, i would be saying, "If only i could have seen what had happened next", but that's just what you want out of an audience seeing the last movie of a trilogy. They always want more. Don't give them the last 5 yards. We're like fat people wanting the extra slice of cake. On the one hand, we want it, but on the other, we know it would spoil our opinion of the whole cake because we got sick of it after eating the last piece.
The special effects were nothing short of spectacular. The drama was fairly intense. Everyone was ready to see a smash hit. Unfortunately, the Return of the King was another case of---a beautiful letdown.