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Anyone wishing to be added to or removed from the Ring-Ping list, please don't hesitate to let me know.
Jesus.
This more of a mini-review.
2 The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Directed by Peter Jackson
After the Matrix sequels imploded, you may have feared big-time for the final chapter of Rings. No worries. It's now official: Peter Jackson has created the mack daddy of all movie fantasies, and Return of the King brings the film version of Tolkien's trilogy to a combustibly exciting close. Prepare to be wowed by the giant spider, the charging Mumakil, the Army of the Dead and the battle of Pelennor Fields. Prepare also to have your emotions wrung out as you watch the coronation of Aragorn (fiery Viggo Mortensen), consider the fate of Frodo (Elijah Wood) and the fellowship, and then get deeper into the character of Sam (Sean Astin comes into his own with this brave, questing performance). The dominance of effects-driven spectacles hasn't been a boon to film -- hello, Haunted Mansion -- but in the hands of a master like Jackson, who respects Tolkien's passion for action and character, it's an art form. Jackson hits a grand slam.
"PROMISE you - you have never seen what you are going to see in this film. I work in the industry IN GRAPHICS, and my jaw was on the floor (that is, when I wasn't saying "Oh my gosh!"). Helm's Deep truly is now nearly dull! The film is epic, sweeping, a vast grand saga in the truest vein. I had high high hopes and expectations, and they were not only met, but SURPASSED. The balance between top-notch action and truly small, personal, touching moments makes this film an incredible narrative. It IS exhausting, but in a very very good way. It is thurough (as thurough as a film with this much in it could be). This film truly delivers, as a final film in a series never has. Not Indy, not Jedi, not Aliens, and certainly, CERTAINLY not Matrix."
*sigh* ahhhhhhhh.... all is right in the world.
ELVES Rule
"Not to beat around the bush, this film is soul-stirring perfection. At 210 minutes, there is not a wasted frame of film. From the smallest moment of quiet conversation to epic battle sequences full of sweeping vistas black with ravaging hordes of Orcs and worse, we are swept into this mythical world with an emotional immediacy that is as compelling as it is enthralling. A broken heart resonates with the same thunderclap of dragon?s wings. In this, the darkest of the films, the characters grow as each fulfills his or her destiny so that they, as well as the story itself, achieve a kind of closure. Bittersweet, though it may be."
"LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING is fabulous in every sense. With its companion films in the trilogy, it?s in a category of its own that is so far above the usual cinematic entertainment in scope and execution, that any attempt at comparisons is an exercise in futility."
"The Battle for Helm's Deep is over. The Battle for Middle Earth is about to begin."
Sauron's forces have attacked Gondor's capital of Minas Tirith in his final siege against mankind. Watched over by a fading steward, Denethor (John Noble), the once great kingdom has never been in more desperate need of its king. But will Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) find the strength to become what he was born to be and ascend to meet his destiny?
As Gandalf (Ian McKellan), with Pippin (Billy Boyd) in tow, desperately tries to move the broken forces of Gondor to act, Théoden (Bernard Hill) unites the warriors of Rohan to join in the fight. Even in their courage and passionate loyalty, the forces of men - with Eowyn (Miranda Otto) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan) hidden among them - are no matches against the swarming legions of enemies raining down on the kingdom.
Despite great losses, The Fellowship charges forward in the greatest battle of their lifetime, united in their singular goal to keep Sauron distracted and give Frodo (Elijah Wood) a chance to complete his quest. Travelling across the treacherous enemy lands of Mordor, Frodo must rely increasingly on Sam (Sean Astin) and Gollum (Andy Serkis) as The Ring continues to test his allegiance and, ultimately, his humanity. The Fellowship's journey is coming to an end.
Let's face facts, folks - there has never been a third chapter to a movie trilogy that has fully delivered or satisfied the way it should have. Return of the Jedi was a good but soulless end to the original Star Wars trilogy, full of wooden acting, an overwhelming sense of trilogy déjà vu and Ewoks. Godfather Part III, also decent, was completely unnecessary, nowhere near as good as the first two and starred Sofia Coppola. The less said about the third parts of the Matrix, Alien and Back To The Future franchises, the better.
Eventually, someone had to break the curse, and it has finally happened. It brings me great pleasure to tell you, though it should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the first two films, that Peter Jackson's third and final entry in the Lord of the Rings saga, The Return of the King, is the film to break said nuisance.
This is a vital, exhilarating concluding chapter that successfully entertains and more than stands on its own merits. The New Zealand director has pulled out all the stops to deliver a bigger, darker, more emotionally resonant motion picture experience that is more satisfying than any fantasy film or second sequel that has come before it. And yes, that includes The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.
Despite shooting all three films at the same time and doing a hell of a job on parts one and two, Jackson's work here is his finest hour, more accomplished and assured than ever. Trials and personal dramas that each of the characters endure in their journeys are given as much attention as the massive battle sequences, in particular the breathtaking Battle of Pelennor Fields.
Sharing writing duties once more with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, the director does a fantastic job adapting Tolkien's final book of the series from page to screen. The trio faithfully capture and translate the late author's eye for detail, small character idiosyncrasies and themes of friendship, temptation, loyalty and bravery that will please both hardcore fans of Tolkien's books and fans of the films.
I stated last year that his trio deserved at least an Oscar nomination for their work on adapting The Two Towers (didn't happen). By taking the slimmest of the three novels and turning it into the richest of films, they deserve not only an Oscar nomination, but quite possibly the award as well.
The large, returning ensemble cast also displays a higher level of acting quality. All have become comfortable, but not complacent, in his or her character. There isn't a bad performance to be had (John Noble makes a fine addition to the cast as Denethor, the jerk of Middle Earth), with the trio of Sean Astin, Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis being this chapter's true standouts.
Wood does a fine job handling Frodo's physical and mental struggles with his task, Serkis is once again wonderfully evil as Gollum and Astin's heartfelt turn as Sam reveals his character to be the true hero of the saga. If there is one minor quibble, it is this - I missed seeing Christopher Lee's Saurman, whose scenes have been cut and saved for the Extended Edition due in 2004.
On a technical level, this is about as good as it gets. From Howard Shore's majestic score to Andrew Lesnie's rich cinematography to Weta Workshop's eye-popping visual effects, including the terrifying giant spider Shelob and an army of 200,000 orcs waging war on Minas Tirith, the movie dazzles the eye as much as it does the mind and heart.
Looking back to a little over two years ago, I remember that I wasn't looking forward to these films. Hollywood seemed to be stuck in a rut - while the price tag on films kept going up, the level of quality went in the opposite direction. After the horrible summer movie season of 2001, I had become so jaded with mega-hyped blockbuster wannabe's that I was convinced this series would just be more of the same - all style, zero substance.
How wonderful it was to be wrong. While the overall quality of big-budget American cinema continues to slide into the sewer, Peter Jackson and his cast and crew of thousands have shown me that quality commercial cinema such as this, the most fully satisfying cinematic trilogy made to date in the history of cinema, is still capable of existing.
- Shawn Fitzgerald
Now That's an Epic: Jackson Conjures Magical Ending To 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy From Grand Battles to Tiny Details, It's a Study in Magnificence"Show us the meaning of haste," the white wizard Gandalf tells his white stallion Shadowfax as they gallop off to one of the many enthralling encounters in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." Haste is a relative thing when it comes to a battle-heavy production with multiple endings that's 200 minutes long. Yet it isn't a crucial thing, for the invisible wizard Peter Jackson makes use of every scene to show us the meaning of magnificence. Never has a filmmaker aimed higher, or achieved more. The third and last installment of the screen epic based on J.R.R. Tolkien's literary classic redefines -- steeply upward -- the very notion of a major motion picture.
Nothing less than the fate of humanity is at stake as the action begins. Middle-earth faces a final onslaught by Sauron's vast forces, which were seen in an earlier era as mythic stand-ins for the Nazis. Aragorn, the velvet-voiced king-to-be, organizes a defense of civilization's last stronghold, a gleaming citadel called Minas Tirith that seems to be a cross between the Mont Saint-Michel and Hoover Dam. The scale of the coming struggle can be gleaned by a series of annunciatory beacons -- a sort of Alpine telegraph -- burning across the mountaintops in a gorgeous sequence that looks as big as all New Zealand, where this masterpiece was made.
But the film operates just as powerfully on a human scale, or, in the case of the madly malign Gollum, an inhuman one. While the battle lines are being drawn, the scuttling little monster with the Peter Lorre wheedle leads Frodo and Sam toward a trap in order to steal the Ring before Frodo can finally return the damned thing to Mount Doom. Although we've marveled at Gollum before, it's still astonishing to see how completely this digital creation has been integrated into a story that's chockablock with compelling men and women. "Frodo lives," declared the flower children's buttons in the 1960s, but everyone here lives vividly, from Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn, Ian McKellen's Gandalf, Orlando Bloom's Legolas, Sean Astin's Sam and Elijah Wood's Frodo to Miranda Otto's radiant Lady Eowyn, who delivers, with joyous understatement, the movie's most rousing line: "I am no man!" (Oddly, Aragorn's big Henry V moment, his exhortation to his troops before battle, is truncated and unaffecting.)
"The Return of the King" turns out to be even more ambitious than its remarkable predecessor, "The Two Towers," though it's obviously not as compact (another relative thing), what with dramatic convolutions within its several plot lines and a stupendous martial passage that manages to dwarf the battle of Helm's Deep. Here again, live action merges seamlessly with digital artistry -- human horsemen by the thousands riding against swarms of Sauron's orcs, whose ranks are augmented by mountainous, mastodonish creatures called Mumakil, plus Fellbeast dragons that swoop down on their prey like Stuka bombers. And Mr. Jackson and his own army of support troops push their special effects to new levels of complexity, continuity and visual logic. When, for example, Legolas leaps onto a Mumakil, it's not just one spectacular shot but a swiftly intricate set piece that focuses on the elf archer until he has figured out how to bring the gigantic beast to the ground.
To write about this culminating chapter of "The Lord of the Rings" is to risk gushing in a public place. Still, I've never seen a movie like it, or been so struck by a filmmaker's generosity and the prodigality of what he has done. Yes, the running time is long, and yes, those many endings in a slow, dreamy coda left me feeling spent -- better spent than I can ever remember.
Hey, Mikey...I think he likes it.