End it already!

Rating: 4/10 (14 May 2004)

I'm beginning to agree with the viewers who remarked that this movie is overrated. Overrated, indeed. I have never been a big fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I admit, the first movie was visually stunning and used some novel techniques for example, to make characters appear much larger than others as actors moved with the cameras to sustain the illusions. It was really something different that came out at the time, especially considering the number of awful movies produced in the mainstream that year, Lord of the Rings really found a good following in a period of utter cinematic slump (at least among the mainstream and partly in the independent features). I think those idiots at the Academy Awards were dumb to pass up recognizing it for one of the top awards that year, probably best director if nothing else. As the first in the series, I think it was given the best treatment as far as writing, visuals, and editing (which would be the bain of the remaining two in the trilogy), and everything else. Again, it was a refreshing change in mainstream films that year, and certainly one well-deserving of the recognition.
But the remaining two films, the Two Towers and now, Return of the King, were disappointing for one major reason: there was never enough in the movies (I don't know about the book) to sustain two movies at lengths of three hours or more each (not to mention the additional "bonus" footage feature on the DVDs). Someone here must've been so proud of their CGI creations and the time and money spent developing the sets that they must've felt like it was just bad manners to leave most of it on the cutting room floor. There is far too much repetition going on in the remaining too movies that could've easily have been made into one three hour film, rather than two.
The Two Towers spent an ungodly amount of time with those epic battle scenes between the billions and billions of Uruk soldiers and the few good-willed soldiers lead by Aragon and others. I found myself aching for the movie to be over with, and was sadly disappointed considering my interest in the first one. We are left with a story of fleeting interest: Sam and Frodo on their journey to toss the ring in the fire (though the introduction of Gollum, that ugly little bugger, was quite an interesting part of the story), Aragon and his gang were out to battle the relentless Uruk army, and Merry and Pippin literally got to be tree hugging hobbits. If the filmmakers didn't worry so much about pleasing the audience with epic CGI battle scenes and concentrated on developing each separate story of the various characters in their journies, it probably would've been a much better film. Although, considering that the third movie, 'Return of the King,' contained a nauseating amount of repetition as far as the story, and dragging on time with endless amounts of boring, dreamy dialogue and even more endless battle scenes, I still think it should've been combined into one movie.

Not only endless dialogue of the fortune tellers and soothsayers, but also an ending that never seemed to end. Once again, it was like the filmmakers tried several things and liked every single ending and just stuck every single one in the movie, whether it was relevant or not (such as Sam and his hobbit daughters or the 'Wizard of Oz' ending where Elijah Wood puts on his queerest happy voice as he greets his friends 'round the bedside). The viewer who suggested that they should of ended it after the coronation was right, there was no need to drag on the movie for another half-hour of fade-ins and fade-outs of one happy ending after the next, as they did enough stalling throughout most of the movies, anyways.
Return of the King is definitely overrated and was hardly deserving of the 'Best Picture' Oscar, nor for every other Oscar it snagged this year, leaving little to be anticipated during the awards knowing that the Lord of the Rings team would win whatever award was announced. The Academy was stupid for not recognizing it with top awards the first time around, and instead, waited for the third anti-climatic cult fest to finally give Jackson and his crew their dues. There were far better movies nominated for Best Picture and nearly every other award this year (save the special effects nominations).
Once again, though, I do think that Peter Jackson and his crew did good with their efforts to recreate Tolkein's stories cinematically. That kind of undertaking for a trilogy filmed simultaneously over 18 months is quite incredible. I just though that, save for the Fellowhip of the Rings, the filmmakers failed to capitalize on the things that would've made the remaining two films in the trilogy something really great, especially if they weren't so bogged down in special effects and cheesy dialogue.