Rent The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Amazon Video (paid link) // Buy the novel (paid link)
Written by: J.R.R. Tolkien (novel), Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson (screenplay)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring:
Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen,
Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis, Dominic
Monaghan, Billy Boyd, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Bean, Hugo Weaving, Karl Urban, John Noble
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.
Verdict
This completes the trilogy, and what an epic adventure this story has been. Each new movie one-ups the last battle we've seen and it happens again here. This is a movie trilogy that must be seen, unmatched in scope, scale, and length. The whole is stronger than the parts. I don't think we'll ever get a movie series like this again.
Watch It.
Review
All three Lord of the Rings movies were filmed simultaneously, which certainly helped the
budget and production. The production design is simply amazing. This
truly feels like Middle-earth which helps fortify the entire movie.
Most of the same team behind Lord of the Rings tried to recreate some of the magic with The Hobbit trilogy. Despite the setting and technology, it wasn't as impressive. For one if felt like they were stretching the story. The Hobbit was one book, with Lord of the Rings being six. The other side of it is that the epic adventure had been done. You can never recapture the first time, and The Hobbit tried to increase spectacle at the sake of realism.
This movie racked up the awards, not so much for this movie alone, but because it was the culmination of one of, if not the, most epic adventure in cinema. This is the movie where it all concludes. While The Fellowship of the Ring I'd rate the highest of the three movies individually, I'd rate the trilogy as a whole even higher. What this movie did has yet to be matched, and it may never happen with the rise of television and epic fantasy adventures opting to go the route of series to better relay and expound upon the source material.
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| Viggo Mortensen and Ian McKellen play Arargorn and Gandalf. |
This has the near unwinnable battles as these characters strap on the armor yet again. Balancing the massive armies in war is the small scale battle of emotions between Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin). Frodo is determined to destroy the ring, but it has corrupted him. Gollum (Andy Serkis) feeds into Frodo's paranoia as Frodo begins to distrust Sam. Sam realizes Gollum's ploy, but Frodo can't see it.
The battles keep getting bigger, and here it's Gondor where Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and team fight orcs yet again.
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| Viggo Mortensen plays Aragorn |
This was the first movie where I distinctly noticed green screen. While this certainly bests the technological highs we've seen previously, I was disappointed that the seams showed a couple times in this one.
This is the culmination of three movies. Ten hours concludes here. You can't really watch this one alone. You need the basis of the first two movies. The first one comes closest to standing alone, but all three of these movies together forms an epic adventure. This trilogy is unmatched in scale and scope. It set a precedent that such a world could be created and people wanted to see it. I don't think we'll ever see a movie trilogy with this kind of scale again. Now, adapted fantasy novels are television series to allow for the necessary length. Studios try to avoid three hour movies, but Lord of the Rings did it for every installment. It's likely today, this would have been six movies, assuming it wasn't adapted to a series instead.
My ranking for the movies is The Fellowship of the Ring, Return of the King, and The Two Towers. As a whole I'd rank this trilogy higher than any of the movies individually.
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