Rings, Kings, and Things
Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Whew. Made it through the three movies, ten-plus hours of computer generated effects, several Yanni songs, and six or seven endings. All in all, thanks. This last segment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy finishes the tale with swashbuckling fun and overstated eagerness.
As we now expect from director Peter Jackson, this episode is packed with fantastic vistas and expertly crafted sequences and set pieces. Like the previous effort, this is mostly a war movie with good guys versus bad guys clearly demarcated -- the bad guys are spectacularly ugly or gluttonous, the good guys, wide-eyed innocents forced into their battles.
As I said, all in good fun. That is if you can take the roller-coaster-viewpoint to which Jackson apparently attached his camera. There is never a moment to pause and reflect which is not overtaken by a lurching camera's sudden swooping to encompass either the sudden appearence of dragons, eagles, or other outsized fauna, or to helicopter the viewer over and through some CGI cityscape, throne-room, or mountain. In the end this is all somewhat too tiring.
It may be that this is the new way of doing things. In fact, before this movie started, there were at least seven trailers of upcoming films. It's likely that the trailers were selected to appeal to an audience looking forward to Return of the King, but it was noteworthy that all of the new movies were effects-studded CGI extravaganzas. CGI in itself should be aesthetically neutral -- yet it seems to be put into the hands of the MTV-editing crowd that can't let the camera sit still enough to watch a real drama. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that good Spielberg out-does most of this unnecessary hyperventilating. LOTR owes more to Moulin Rouge than to Tolkien; no matter how much Elfin language and brilliantly realised architecture, you can't get a sense of much of this when you're being whip-sawed back and forth for three-and-a-quarter hours.
Of course, when the film does stop for a moment, there are undeniable strong points which mostly more than make up for any criticisms. Case in point, unlike many sagas, by the end of this movie, Frodo and Sam truly look drained of all spirit, they're dirty, exhausted, and half-dead. That's exactly right. While we all know that it the next frame, they'll be saved, there are times when you really do wonder how they're going to have the energy to make it through to the end. That that feeling comes through is a testament to Jackson's focus even amongst all the effects.
One final quibble, unfortunately, is the multiple endings which take up the last fifteen minutes of the film. Jackson's plan of course is to put it all up there on the screen, no matter how long we've been sitting. If there's some more Tolkein, he'll do his best to show it to us. So, just as the books describe what happens afterward to most of our favorite characters, so we have to sit through some mindlessly teary-eyed mutual admiration. When even the first-night audience laughs at yet another scene of goodbye, you know you've added more than enough pages to the script. (Forgive the comparison, but Lucas manages the movie ending bows much quicker, just enough to say thanks and cue up the credits and theme music.)