A breathtakingly beautiful, utterly perfect film

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2006)

Peter Jackson has achieved the impossible with the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. He has crafted a motion picture that is not only technically perfect, but visually mind-blowing and immensely entertaining in every respect. And what's more, Jackson has not only accomplished this feat once, but three times in a row! THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING and THE TWO TOWERS were exciting, breathtakingly beautiful motion pictures, and THE RETURN OF THE KING is no different. Like its predecessors, RETURN is rich with dazzling special effects; a haunting, melodic score; and hundreds of amazingly well-choreographed battle sequencesall set against the stunning backdrop of rural New Zealand.
The series flows seamlessly from one film to the next, yet each film stands on its own as a unique, original work of cinematic art. In THE RETURN OF THE KING, Frodo and Sam carry on their trek to Mount Doom to dispose of the One Ring, while a seemingly endless war for the future of Middle Earth rages on around them. Meanwhile, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli all venture to the Cursed Mountains to seek assistance from the lost souls who forever dwell there; as the beautiful elfin queen Arwen is torn between her father's wishes of joining her people for eternal life and her own desire to sacrifice her immortality in order to be with Aragorn.
There's a lot going on in the LORD OF THE RINGS films, and unless you're already familiar with the story (I wasn't), it can be difficult to keep track of the many characters and subplots. Broken down, the LORD OF THE RINGS storyline is nothing more than a good-versus-evil tale, albeit a complex, multilayered one. The pacing is suitably evenhanded, allotting equal amounts of screen time to the various colorful characters and journeys taking place within Middle Earth. THE RETURN OF THE KING never once falls into the trap of showing too much or too little of a certain subplot, and it never progresses too far without providing ample information about what is taking place elsewhere.
Though I was impressed with virtually every facet of the RINGS trilogy, what strikes me most about these films is Jackson's astounding attention to detail. Every shot is impeccably executed, right down to the last frame. The set design, costumes, weaponry, and even the traits and mannerisms of the different races of characters are perfectly and meticulously conceived. The amount of time and dedication invested into these films is truly unfathomablejust take a look at the credits! The computer-generated characters are some of the most impressive I have ever seen, particularly the subtle movements and detailed facial expressions of Gollum. However, the CG creatures still lack the naturalism of organic movement, and at times their interaction with human characters seems too obviously staged. There's a certain fluid, overly smooth quality of their movement that makes it seem artificial. We certainly have come a long way in the field of computer animation, but we still have quite a ways to go to combine it with live action and make it seem completely believable. This is not to say that the CG in LORD OF THE RINGS isn't great, just that it's not perfect. Still, it's probably as close to perfection as is humanly possible at this point.
THE RETURN OF THE KING swept the Academy Awards in 2004, raking in a well-deserved, unprecedented eleven Oscars. Not bad for a guy whose first foray into feature film-making was a low-budget gorefest about flesh-eating aliens!