Once in a generation...

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2002)

I love movies - these days there seems to be such a general high standard of film making that was missing from, say, 10 years ago. I let myself get taken along with most film-makers who show even the slightest bit of emotional tact. Peter Jackson has whole landscapes of the stuff. This time it's very dark stuff yes, but anyone who knows Jackson's earlier films will not be surprised to find that even the nasty orcs and uruk-hai have a tendency to raise a smile with their 'cockerney barra-boy' chit-chat. There's little time for breath - there's just so much story to pack in (and even at three hours it's a struggle) - so when Aragorn does begin to dream of elves and romance 2 hours in, it's almost a relief. There are problems - the time constraints have, at times, embarressed the editing and the dialogue will certainly annoy those people who believe real English is what is done when texting your mates on your mobile. It doesn't matter though because anyone who watches this film with even the smallest bit of objectivity will come away after 3 hours stunned by Gollum and Helm's Deep. Pushing boundarys and breaking new ground for the sake of the storyline is taken for granted by Peter Jackson, or so it seems - but if we stop for a moment and imagine the amount of work that must have been done to achieve this we only then begin to realise that these sort of films don't come round that often. If The Return Of The King keeps up the consistancy next year, there can be no doubt that we have been blessed to be around as these films were released - just to tell our grandkids....I remember when those films first came out...I was there on opening night!