What can be said - slightly short of a masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2003)

(minor interstitial spoilers) At least three-quarters of this movie is perfect - every scene, every character, every shot evenly and perfectly bears the weight of the entire movie. Though I felt some shots and characters were, perhaps, slightly wasted, in context it seems trivial. The ending 40-45 minutes could have been smoother--thus the one-quarter I am less confident about--and it certainly was dragging at the end. I overheard several people leaving the theater wondering aloud when the movie was going to end. Perhaps it was the late hour--our showing didn't let out until after midnight.

Peter Jackson executes with a sure and confident hand in ROTK. His direction and editing is masterful and he brings his actors--who, frankly, were lacking in the previous films--up to the task in this final movie. I think the length of this production and the years the cast and crew spent making these films comes together to near-flawless effect in ROTK.

The previous films were substantially flat in comparison. They were "good" and sometimes "bad" and almost never "great." I really think the actors - most of whom were not especially "great" actors before the Ring series - with the exception of Ian McKellan and Cate Blanchett, though she was essentially a beautiful mute in all previous - and Jackson himself, a B-grade horror movie director hitherto, didn't have great dramatic footing in the first two. Even though the story was clear, he didn't really know how to tell it in the first two films. Whatever his vision was, it fell short. The same cannot be said of ROTK.
The battle for Minas Tirith I think will be remembered as one of the great battle scenes shot on film. The near-seamless combination of live action and CGI has set a new standard. It is breathtaking work and a real revelation of filmmaking craftsmanship.
The only big dramatic "flaw" was the final anticlimactic battle at Mordor--even as you saw overwhelming numbers of baddies surrounding the armies of Gondor, you already knew that Mordor would be defeated. I have never read the books but even I was aware that Frodo and Sam would succeed in tossing the ring into the volcano.
I didn't get a specific sense that the final 45 minutes or so were a tacked-on tying up of loose ends. It felt more like the dramatic energy was running thin, like everyone on the set was essentially running out of steam (and who can blame them?). Maybe it was deliberately played down because, after all, this isn't a "Hollywood Ending" kind of movie that can have a flaming building smoking in the background and a spiffy little remark as the credits close like a "Die Hard" or "Rambo"-type franchise.

In the final analysis--if there is such a thing--it is nearly impossible to dismiss the whole because of any part of it. So much of it is composed and delivered so masterfully that the minor flaws are ultimately very easily excused. I found myself very satisfied that a movie, especially such an epic one, had been done so well--so often I find parts of movies great in certain aspects but other aspects act to effectively kick the leg of a table out and destroy the whole composition. ROTK has all its legs fully intact and strong at the end and we're very pleased to have watched it.