It's over, and nothing will ever be the same again. (SPOILERS)

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2003)

It's over.
It's over. And now, somehow, nothing will ever be the same again.
That pretty much sums up the ending to "The Lord of the Rings" (both the books and the films). And it also turns out be how I'm feeling right now, after FINALLY getting to see "The Return of the King". (Why did it take so long? Well, I was teaching in Cedar Rapids this week. Doesn't Cedar Rapids have theaters? Yes, but not many. Only one of them was showing "Return of the King", and only on one screen. And oh, to complicate matters still further: it turns out that Elijah Wood lived in Cedar Rapids until he was nine years old, and many of his relatives still live there today, leading to a rather large fan base for this film. And besides that, as one of my students said: there's just nothing else to do in Cedar Rapids. So ALL showings were sold out.)
That wasn't how I planned to start this review. But it's what keeps echoing through my head. It's over, and nothing will ever be the same again.
No, here's the opening that I originally planned: If you're a Tolkien purist, just stay home. Pretend you never heard of this film. Pretend there was a nasty fire at the studio, and all the master prints were incinerated. Because far, far more than the first two films, this film differs from the book. There are a lot of little differences, a few larger differences, and one great big difference...
It's better.
OK, before you break out the tar and feathers, realize something about me: I read "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" something like twelve times in middle school and high school, and around three times since. I read every book of Tolkien commentary I could find. I actually read "The Silmarillion" once, cover to cover. While I can no longer read and write Elvish, I once was pretty decent at it -- using the Tengwar script, no less. I once reread the entire series just so I could create a list of all the really memorable quotes. I once wrote musical scores for all of the songs in the books, even the ones in Elvish, because I wanted to capture how they sounded in my head. I'm not just a casual reader, I'm a Serious Fan (just not as Serious as I once was).
And I'm telling you: AS A MOVIE, this last movie is better than the last book would have been if it had been filmed verbatim. (Conversely: as a book, this movie couldn't hold a candle to the real book. The richness and depth of the original is what makes the book a classic.)
The pacing is better suited to a movie: fewer long introspective scenes, more of a sense of continuity from scene to scene. As with the second film, Jackson chose NOT to follow Tolkien's example of splitting the story into two halves: the Frodo-and-Sam half, and the everybody-else half. Instead, he intermingled the scenes, and did so masterfully. I had a better sense of what was going on with one group while the other group was doing such-and-such than I EVER did with the books (and the books included a calendar in the appendices, so you could go look this up if you wanted). Plus the two parallel story lines let Jackson play with the mood: fast and furious action scene on the Pelennor fields; cut to tense conflict between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum; etc. In the book, the fast and furious action was broken up by long, involved discussions that just wouldn't have played well on the screen. Jackson managed to break up the pace in a much better way, given the time frame and given the fact that the audience probably isn't as interested in the history of Numenorean kings as I am.
There are other changes. Lots of them. Again, purists, stay home. There are some fairly major new scenes, usually included as a way to dramatize or bring to light some essential bit of characterization, history, or mental struggle. Some are fairly drastic departures from the book. (ELROND showing up in ROHAN? Arwen falling ill from the Shadow?) I noticed a lot of them at the time; and yet now, two hours later, I can scarcely recall them. They just fit into the narrative so well that they don't stand out as "wrong", in retrospect.
And did I say "fast and furious action scenes"? Oh, man, the battles here make the battle for Helm's Deep in the last film look tame! I cannot recall a previous cinematic battle where there was so much going on at once, and yet I could follow the course of the action so well. Helm's Deep in "The Two Towers" and also the battle for Osgiliath were relatively constrained areas for battle. Here, we had the battle of the Pelennor Fields, a great, big, wide open space, where the tactics changed: and the operative word was "motion". No, make that MOTION! Oliphants rampaging all over the Fields, and then going berserk when attacked. The charge of the Rohirrim, and how those swift horsemen just chewed through the ranks of the orcs. The way a war troll could hit someone and send him flying. And the way the Nazgul and their Fell Beasts scattered around, swooping up hapless victims and letting them fall from great heights. These weren't just battles, they were collisions.
Oh, and did I mention the special effects? No? That's because there aren't any. I just couldn't notice the special effects. I was watching the story, and the effects were in service to the story. I normally yawn at films that are special effects extravaganzas. (If you want an earful some time, ask my opinion of "Terminator 2".) If there's a story there, you don't need the effects; and if there's no story there, the effects won't impress me. Well, here, all I saw was story.
And on that subject: Minas Tirith is just absolutely incredible. I couldn't begin to tell what parts were models, what parts were CGI, and what parts were actual sets. But I can tell you this much: once again, Jackson got it perfect. If you had shown me the various angle shots and never told me what the film was, I am absolutely convinced that I would guess what city I was seeing. Jackson took Tolkien's detailed description of the city and very faithfully brought it to life.
Now all this admiration doesn't mean I couldn't have liked it better. There are things that were cut from the book that I would like to have seen:
* Gandalf and company debating Saruman in his tower. (I'm told this is slated for the extended DVD.)
* The romance between Faramir and Eowyn. (Again, slated for the DVD.)
* The orcs in Mordor. I think that, overall, Jackson made a wise choice in cutting down on the Mordor scenes. Those couple of chapters were always the most tedious to me: page after page of struggling over barren plains with no food and water and with danger always close by. It just seemed to go on and on; and actually, that was how the journey was supposed to feel, but it made for tedious reading. But there was one scene, where two orcs discussed their post-war plans, that I always thought was profound. I really got the feeling that these two orcs might be just ordinary guys, if they hadn't been raised as orcs. They wanted the simple, mundane life, just like hobbits; but because they had orc perspectives, their "simple lives" involved setting themselves up as minor bandit chiefs somewhere. I always felt like this scene showed some promise for orcs: if they hadn't been corrupted by Sauron, maybe they wouldn't act like, well, orcs.
* The Scouring of the Shire. If you've read the book, you know what I mean. If you haven't read the book, you'll never miss it. It's a post-climactic echo of the larger conflict: the hobbits return home, and find that the Shire has been turned into a little mini-Mordor, with outside thugs and a few bad hobbits running the place for their own benefit. The heroes have to inspire and lead the other hobbits to overthrow their occupiers; and in the end, they find out that this was all a big scheme by Saruman to grow his empire and also exact some revenge. This served a purpose in the book: it showed how far-reaching evil was, and contributed to Frodo's sense of loss. And I absolutely loved the way Merry and Pippin, warriors of Rohan and Gondor respectively, just laughed off the Shirriffs and the thugs. After you've stabbed the Lord of the Nazgul or looked on Sauron in a palantir, what threat is a mere ruffian? But I also understand why this part never made the film: the book has something like six or more chapters of denouement AFTER Sauron is defeated, and a film audience wouldn't want to sit through that. The Scouring would have been at least another 30 minutes, including another battle scene. (And compared to earlier battle scenes, there's just no way that scene would be as exciting.) So this chapter had to go. But I missed it.
Now for some comments on individual characters:
* Gimli fans: I'm sorry to say that once again, the dwarf is used mostly for comic relief. On the other hand, his line that got the most laughs was straight from the books (right before he entered the Paths of the Dead).
* Legolas fans: if you thought he was cool in combat before, wait until you see him take on the oliphant!
* Gandalf ROCKS! He's a more active combatant than in the books. And I mean physical combat, not magical. He swings around sword and staff in ways that are really effective and really scary.
* Eomer never becomes Aragorn's close friend, and thus there's never the joyous reunion on the Pelennor Fields.
* Merry and Pippin are both more active in battle than they were in the book. Plus Pippin's lighting the signal fire was a really fun, tense scene, and it made Denethor look even more defeatist than in the books.
* Shelob: very effective. Brrr!
* And finally: Gollum. He's much, much sneakier than in the books, even making Frodo distrust Sam during a major scene. But he's also part of probably my only disappointment with the film. In the second film, there was a constant struggle between his meek, good side and his evil side. In this film, there's a struggle; but it's about whether to attack Frodo and Sam directly, or to leave them to Shelob. The good side is gone. That's OK in itself: by the third book, Gollum's evil side had won out. But along the way, Jackson transposes some dialog from the second book. In the original, Gollum's sides debate, and the good side almost wins! But Sam disturbs him, accuses him of "sneaking", and inadvertently pushes the victory to the evil side. Gollum rightly gets offended when his efforts to do good are turned against him. I actually felt pity for him when he told Frodo, "Smeagol's a sneak," in a rebuke at Sam. In the third film, the same scene -- Sam accusing Gollum, Gollum taking offense -- with almost the same words does not lead to pity but to dread: for what Sam interrupted was a debate between evil Gollum and eviler Gollum, and Sam's accusations were completely justified.
The ending is pretty much exactly the ending from the books. That disappointed some people seated near us, because it's really rather a slow ending, and a little on the downer side to boot. But that's exactly how it's supposed to end. Not to spoil it for anybody, but "Sometimes, the hero doesn't get to enjoy his success" was a major point of the story.
And now it's over. And now, somehow, nothing will ever be the same again. I'll see these films again, many times; but I'll never again get to experience the surprise -- so strong in this film and the first, less strong in the second -- of seeing a picture that formed in my brain almost three decades ago suddenly appear on screen just the way I imagined it, but with far richer detail. Nothing will match that experience.
And that, really, is how these films are MOST like the books: nothing will match them. While I have enjoyed other fantasy books and series on rare occasions, no book or series has ever engrossed me in the same way. Long ago, I came to the realization that there simply was no scale on which to compare. There was Tolkien, and there was everyone else. It really came down to this: there's only one "Lord of the Rings".
But now there are two. Thank you, Peter Jackson.