A legitimately great movie

Rating: 9/10 (20 December 2003)

An adventure movie to match the great ones of the past, and the one to beat for the future. The culmination of this ambitious trilogy is more than fitting; it surpasses the first two films by quite a distance. Almost nothing disappointed or bothered me. All parts of the story were equally interesting. It was sweeping, it was involving, it was beautiful. One of the few thing I would complain about is the villain. Sauron is boring and more or less unseen. He does not feel very threatening. And his army of orcs has been dull since the first film. They're just not very interesting creatures. Fortunately, The Return of the King really makes up for these monsters with a gallery of better ones. Some of them have been present in the other two films, trolls and those flying dragons that the ring wraiths ride on. They're more present here, however. Even better, though, those gigantic elephants, ten times the size of a normal one. Oh, man, those are cool. Star Wars fans might grumble that they were too much like the AT-AT walkers from Empire, and they are. One scene where Legolas, the elf, triumphs over one of them feels like a sped up version of Luke Skywalker's attack. But the very best thing is a giant spider. Everyone knows that there was originally a giant spider on skull island in King Kong, cut from the film because it really disturbed a test audience. Seeing the spider in Return of the King is like having that famous piece of lost footage restored. When all three films are finally out on their special edition DVDs, I'm going to spend a month combing through them to see whether or not the entire series of films isn't just as good as this one, or perhaps as good as many of my younger friends have sworn they were.