Great story, good and bad film making.

Rating: Null/10 (10 March 2004)

I just saw the 'Return of the King'. I had seen 'Fellowship of the Ring' whe it was first released, but waited to see 'The Two Towers' on video. I had read the books many years ago, twice.
The film did do a good job of following the books from my thirty year old recollection. I do not remember such an emphasis on the actual details of combat in the books. Some of these fight scenes went on for way too long, and then quickly came to a finish. people kept falling off cliffs only to re-appear a little later. The computer generated shots had nice artwork and usually worked. The effects used during editing were distracting. I found some of the close in live action shots very annoying. It was either one or the other and not much in between. The coronation scenes would cut from the large overview to a close up frame of just four heads on the screen, nothing in between. And what of those four hobbits looking off over the crowd with angst and awe.
Too much wistful face shots overfilled with the theme song for me. Frodo was the most guilty, but they all did it. All the hobbits did it, Gandalf did it, the elves did it endlessly. It is as if showing their enlarged, faces on the screen was actually suppose to advance the plot. Like we could read their minds or see through their eyes. Jackson used it as filler. He would just fill the screen with a wistful face and play theme music.

Jackson extensively used wide angle computer generated scenes and very close up life shots. some of the cg worked and some did not. I found the editing very annoying at times, fast and flashy but still choppy and distracting. or the film would suddenly cut to slow mo, choppy edits for a short section of a scene.
The scenes of the city folk in in both Rohan and Gondor, Women and children shown worried and fretted of the coming war in a slow motion cut again was just filler.