Pieces come together in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Director Peter Jackson concludes the Tolkien trilogy in grand style.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published December 16, 2003
[Photos: New Line Cinema]
Director Peter Jackson, left, discusses a scene with actor Bernard Hill, who plays King Theoden of Rohan. The final installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a masterpiece of storytelling.
Frodo (Elijah Wood), left, and Sam (Sean Astin) begin their climb toward Mount Doom, where the ring must be destroyed.
Gollum (Andy Sirkis) is one of the movie's most fascinating personalities and an amazing display of technology.
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Leave it to the wise wizard Gandalf to put the concluding chapter of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in perspective: "The board is set. The pieces are moving."
Finally, after six hours of introductions and foreshadowing - longer if you count the extra footage on home video - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King pays off in breathtaking fashion. Gandalf's chess match analogy is appropriate. Director Peter Jackson proves himself a grandmaster by making a jumble clearer, more emotionally involving. The film has everything devoted readers - in some cases memorizers - of J.R.R. Tolkien's writing already gleaned from his novels while the rest of us shook our heads in frustration.
We've waded through so many characters, so much faux Shakespearean dialogue, so many odd names and locales, and so little personal drama to compete with spectacle for our attention. All is excused now, even by someone like me who believes weeks of reading shouldn't be required to comprehend and enjoy one movie, much less three. The Return of the King is the equal of its predecessors in visual marvels, yet surpasses both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in pure storytelling.
The first film now looks like Jackson's attempt to prove he could deliver to the screen Tolkien's strange world of Hobbits, elves and sorcerers. The second movie with its thundering action and mid-myth darkness now plays like Jackson showing off and biding time until he could get to meatier material. The Return of the King rewards viewers with resolutions - without sacrificing grandeur and true emotions - rather than virtual video gamesmanship.
The difference is obvious from the opening sequence of The Return of the King. It's a flashback to events spawning the saga's most fascinating personality, albeit a split one, of Gollum and Smeagol, a former bearer of the gold ring controlling Middle-earth's fate. The setting, an idyllic fishing hole, could be found in our own universe. That connection to reality is subtle, yet vital to our ability to relate to such fantasy. The sin erupting in that locale - fratricide for greed's sake - is more deeply felt than any drama in the first two films. With that auspicious beginning, Jackson buys another three hours of attention from viewers worn out by the first two Rings flicks.
Gollum/Smeagol, played by Andy Sirkis, is an astounding blend of human skill and digital motion-capture technology. Each move and expression comes directly from the actor, enhanced into something entirely inhuman by computers. Gollum was only glimpsed in Part 1, and Jackson kept Sirkis incognito while promoting Part 2 to preserve the magical effect. Now it's time to give this extraordinary actor his due. This is a classic screen villain and hero rolled into one scrawny, sneaky package that would be merely a cinematic stunt if a gifted actor weren't behind the pixels. Ignoring Sirkis during the awards season because we never see his true face is like saying John Hurt didn't deserve praise for playing the Elephant Man. Neither makeup nor technology can provide this kind of skillful emoting.
The Return of the King picks up with Gollum/Smeagol leading Hobbit heroes Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) through forests and mountains to reach the fires of Mount Doom, where the ring, now in Frodo's possession, must be destroyed. Meanwhile, the survivors of Part 2's sweeping Battle of Helm's Deep are summoning strength to defend the kingdom of Gondor where Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) is destined to rule. The forces of Sauron, a fiery evil eye, are massing for an assault on Gondor to decide the future of Middle-earth.
Of course, that's the plot that has been thickening - or coagulating - since the first hour of The Fellowship of the Ring. As narratives go, the Rings trilogy trudges along like the beasts dragging a battering ram to the gates of Gondor. But the way Tolkien's characters fulfill the extensive foreshadowing makes The Return of the King worthwhile.
Pain and the creeping psychosis effected by the ring make Frodo more than the reluctant hero we've seen over two movies. Danger enables Samwise to evolve into someone other than pudgy comic relief. Thankfully, Aragorn's romantic triangle with Arwen (Liv Tyler) and Eowyn (Miranda Otto) is dashed away, making one woman practically dispensable until the finale and the other free to become a tough warrior. Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), whose presence dulled The Two Towers, makes a brief but crucial appearance. Gandalf is still the moral core of the tale, a duty Ian McKellen continues to honor with nobility and sly humor. Royalty becomes less pathetic and family rifts reach the boiling point. The archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) handles the single most impressive act of derring-do. Everyone including the lesser Hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) has something important to accomplish, even briefly paralleling Gollum/Smeagol's greedy indiscretions.
Jackson's attention to drama doesn't distract him from what his Rings trilogy has always done best, staging epic battles unlike anything seen on screen before. Nearly an hour passes in The Return of the King before a sword is swung, but when the action begins it's astonishing. Huge elephantine weapons of mass destruction called Mumakil are the most impressive new special effects development, while the dragonlike flying Nazgul glimpsed briefly in The Two Towers are given plenty to destroy. A cast of tens of thousands is digitally created for the battle sequences, with only a few instances when the fakeness is betrayed.
The only noticeable problem is Jackson's inability to know when to quit. The final 20 minutes of The Return of the King are anticlimactic but, I'm told, so were the last 100 pages or so of Tolkien's book. The filmmaker's desire to remain as true to the source as possible is admirable, even if that meant stretching about four hours of solid material into a pair of three-hour films before this. But along the way he wowed us. Jackson's trilogy never failed to catch my eye and now, finally, he found at least a temporary path to my heart.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Grade: A
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Andy Sirkis, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving, Liv Tyler, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Bernard Hill, David Wenham, Miranda Otto, John Noble, Cate Blanchett
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
