Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2016)

"Return of the King" is an incredible end to an incredible series. At many points in the film, it almost seems as if all hope is lost. A king is upset that his son Boromir died, so he takes it out on his other son, Faramir, when he is in desperate need of help against Saruman's forces. Then when Faramir is brought back (seemingly) dead, he assumes the worst and sets up a ritual for his body to be burnt. Of course Gandalf comes in at the last moment and the king ends up being burnt and only just after he sees that his son is alive. Frodo is deceived by Golum and tells Sam to go home, symbolically choosing his bad side over his good, or his Golum over his Smeagle, respectively. He has self control. Merry is taken away from Pippin. Gandalf even seems to have lost hope in the situation. But the characters prevail. We see a shot of Frodo hunched over Golum, strangling him after Golum betrayed him, but unlike Golum, Frodo stands up and stops, showing how Frodo is different from Golum. Sam falls down the stairs trying to back, but returns right when Frodo is at his most vulnerable, and despite being tossed around and almost killed by a monster, he kills it, which shows how much they need each other, and again how every man needs someone to lean on. Merry decides to fight for his friends despite not being with them. Aragorn fights to get more people to fight with them against Saruman's army.
This is one of the greatest strengths of this film. Putting aside the fantastic and believable character arcs that develop over these three movies, and the incredible, epic action scenes, with special effects that hold up surprisingly well, there's something that really stood out to me. In the beginning, a fellowship is assembled that puts together some unlikely companions who end up becoming friends through their experiences and further understanding of each other. This care for each other is what drives them and gives them courage in the worst situations. This begins to happen on a larger scale in the third film. The elf army is now uniting with the humans, when only just recently they were arguing with each other. The ents fight against Saruman's forces as well. Then in the next film, this continues to grow in scale, with everyone they could possibly get uniting against Sarumans forces, and this is mainly to help Sam and Frodo who are in their own task. This is not just relevant to the film, but to the world. There is much evil in the world, and we need to be able to depend on each other to help get rid of it. No one man can do it on his own, and every man has a part to play.
But the greatest part of this film is its ending. This film has an incredibly bittersweet ending in which I actually found myself tearing up and nearly crying on multiple occasions, which almost never happens to me in movies. Sam at one point on the mountain says "We may not have a journey back to the shire" shortly before they destroy the ring, but this line coming from the most optimistic character in the movie shows that he has accepted the idea of death. Pippin and Gandalf do this earlier in the film in a conversation they have about death, and the end of the film is about this acceptance. Death is inevitable, but it's not always a bad thing, and we have to accept that at some point or another our time will come for all of us, it just comes faster for others.