Where's the King?

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2003)

Hmm, there's 1200 comments at the moment, not sure that another one is needed.
In brief, I was disappointed by this movie in some ways. Part of that disappoinment came from knowing that it was all finally drawing to an end. And the rest? Well...
The film is called Return of the King and yet I felt that after Aragorn/Viggo had been really well built up as a character in the first two, he sort of vanished in this one in some ways. Sure, he's on the screen a fair amount of the time, but the character got a little lost amidst the rest of it. The Frodo and Sam episodes are well told, but the Army of the Dead didn't get the attention it deserved and was almost a throwaway when it's vital to focus of the story. I don't think it would have taken much, but we weren't given the chance to see Aragorn really become a king.
I can't say I missed Saruman that much, but in view of what was included instead of his scenes, I'm not sure...
A lot of this may well work out better in the DVD Extended Edition and it's painful to pick holes in such an outstanding piece of filmmaking overall. It just felt that the editing could have been a little sharper in this last one.
Having said all this, you would be a complete banana not to go and see it. It still shows up every other mainstream epic.