A long awaited end...

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2003)

...not just of this trilogy but also a milestone in movie making.
***possible minor spoilers***
This third installment was as beautifully rendered as those preceding it but also a wonderful tying of a knot bringing the story together. We met Shelob in the most realistic giant spider ever to have thrilled a movie audience. We got to see brilliant acting from a CGI figure in a two sided and expressive Gollum. Massive battles and orcs actually performing before the camera instead of simply being slaughtered. We saw many things we already knew well from the books and dreaded to see spoiled. But none were.
What we didn't see and what surprised me much was the demise of Saruman and his sneaky vengeance. The book has an interesting effect on the reader in this part in that the climax seems to have passed and all is well, when suddenly Galadriel's prophecies come true and hope is seemingly lost. A true roller coaster climax. Must we wait for the DVD to see that? This is where one movie making milestone is set. With this trilogy the DVDs supersedes the theater version. We've had extended versions and extra material before, but never such hefty focus on the DVD media as this. In some ways I find this a pity. The cinema screen is on the smaller side, how small is not the TV screen compared to this? There have been many scenes left out like this one, but none that I have missed this much.
The entire trilogy considered, this was an immense joy to watch. Characters were true to the book and to my own private visualizations formed over countless readings since my childhood. There were aspects of the story that could never make it to a movie and passages that had to be left out and I really think Peter Jackson made a good job of doing that. Sure, he made a few wrong turns and left out important details and added some that I find distracting but few were alarming and I am happy not to have had to be the one to do it. A few details readily in mind are these in particular:

1) The monsters, i.e. vargs, trolls etc. were sentient beings in the story. This is not in harmony with them being pictured in the movie as domesticated animals in orc service, like the orcs riding vargs in battle.
2) I always saw (and maybe wrongly so) the oliphants (and the [po]tatos) as a subtle link to our world. Something recognizable that would bring a bit of a chuckle reading about them and suggest to us that Middle Earth was not an entirely different universe from ours. The oliphants in the movie, however, are humongous and simply unbelievable in their weird appearance. I would much rather they had been plain old vanilla elephants.
3) Frodo was a burdened character but not a weak one. He had the weaknesses of a hobbit, true, but nothing that wouldn't turn to his advantage once in a while. In the movie the heavy load of carrying the ring is by no means evident and soon you grow tired with always seeing a debilitated Frodo where in fact he should be simply worn-out. He could easily have been made stronger without jeopardizing the sympathetic bond between the characters.
All short comings aside, this was a once in a lifetime experience. I have never had a movie have this effect on me as this trilogy had.

Thomas Nielsen