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  • Film & TV Moderators: ghostfreak

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

just got home from seeing this in my town's biggest theater with a packed crowd of Friday-night frenzied moviegoers. with only a few minutes of reflection, all i can say is...AMAZING. the immediate film comparison that comes to my mind is Lawrence of Arabia, in terms of scale and storytelling. Return of the King, if anything, is dense and epic. It plays like a book -- no neatly wound short ending; it gives closure but leaves possibilites. (No, I have not read the books.) To me, one of the most striking aspects, and perhps climax of the trilogy, is Frodo's flaw and failure in Mt. Doom. off to sleep now.
 
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I really liked it. I was especially impressed with the way Minas Tirith was depicted, and overall I think Jackson has done an amazing job bringing these stories to life.

The only thing I have to say is that I thought the ending dragged on a little, and in that one scene at the end where Frodo is in bed and Merry and Pippen come and jump on the bed I was fully expecting a pillow fight to break out followed by some homo-erotic hobbit touching.
 
Thanks alasdair :)

Today I bought the extended DVD version of Two Towers, my flatmate has the extended DVD version of Fellowship. We are going to watch both of these before going to see ROTK :)

CB :)
 
You guys thought the ending was dragged out? The book ending is so much different and longer than the movie ending. The Shire is in ruins when they return home. That aside, i thought this was an excellent movie, the best of the three like I imagined. Just wish i had a better seat :\
 
I was actually kinda happy that they cut the decimation of the Shire out. With that in it, the movie would have been 4.5 hours - way too long to sit still for. The only complaint I had was the final departure scene seemed a bit too drawn out, but maybe I was just getting antsy. Amazing film all in all. I loved the beginning where Smiegel transformed into Gollum. The makeup into CGI was awesome.

On an off-topic note, why the hell do people clap at movies? When the credits started to roll, there were like 20 people in my theater clapping. Why??? No one is there to hear the appreciative applause. This is one thing that always bothers me. I mean, dammit, it's not a play it's a movie.
 
I loved it when I saw it, but last night I picked it apart and found some stuff I really didn't like.

First, the army of the dead looked too cartoony and Disney, I think they could have made it much darker and creepy, not something that looks like it's from The Haunted Mansion.

Another thing that sort of bothered me was that it seemed much easier for Frodo and Sam to get to Mt Doom through Mordor in the movie then it should have been. In the book it's such an immense struggle, and includes scenes of them rejoicing when they discover some dirty trickly water because they can finally drink. I know they can't include all the tiny scenes into a movie that's already 3 and a half hours, but I would just like to have felt like it was nearly impossible to get through Mordor and they just barely do. I guess the movie just felt really sped up in terms of things happening, I pictured a much longer time between Frodo being in the tower and Sam finding him.

And I guess Legolas's character in general. Tolkien imagined a fair, magical, elegant elf. I think Jackson really made him like the "cool hip skater dude elf" who shows off and surfs not only down stairs on a shield, but down oliphant trunks as well, as he heckles the dwarf in a friendly manner and a comedic line is given. I can understand why they did it though.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie and am seeing it at the IMAX in a day or two(!) I just realized ROTK had more things that bugged me than the first two. But yah, what an astounding movie. (Even the toughest human would break down when Aragorn has everyone bow to the Hobbits... /tear).
 
^^

I really felt that it was a struggle for them getting to Mordor. They kept collapsing, etc, and Sam had to carry Frodo for part of it. I mean, it was a huge climb and they couldn't focus on every detail - but c'mon, it's not going to resemble the book exactly how you'd wish it to. Time constraints of course always ruin those things.

oh and I completely disagree about the army of the dead. they certainly creeped me out. I thought the swarm of them looked totally awesome, and they kicked all sorts of ass ;) But, to each their own. personally, I'm not familiar with Disney movies anymore ;)
 
I agree with a lot of what Yggdrasil said. I thought loads of the film was really hurried through, especially the end of the battle where the dead army flooded through Gondor. They seemed to just turn up and then the battle was won. Where were the close ups of them killing?

What was there I thought was absolutely amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, I just don't think they should have had to fit it all in to 3:20. I don't see peoples problems with having an attention span of more than 3 hrs. MTV generation I guess. A grand finale of 4 hours plus with an intermission I reckon would have been amazing.
 
I could see where you are coming from with the Disney reference and the ghost army. Nonetheless, I thought they were pretty well done, although the green hue was a tad Disneyish.

Don't forget that they have released extended versions of the first two on DVD so it seems likely that there might be an even more epic version of this one. The intermission idea would make a 4 hour movie tolerable, but I think theaters would protest since they can't get as many screenings in IMO.
 
great movie, but the theatrical version did not need the ending they decided to go with imo...that was purely best for the extended version.

Overall, I had a great time watching it. Only problems I had were with some changes in how the pace of the battle went in the book in contrast to how the movie told how the battle went. Nonetheless, entertaining...and as I said before, I was surprised with some of the material that was left out in the theatrical version, thus I am anxiously awaiting for the Extended version to come out in 11 damn months.
 
While I felt the movie was just as visually amazing as the other two, I also think it was the most butchered. In my opinion, it was a 3 hour preview for the real movie that will be called "the extended version".

First of all, I didn't really care about the characters. They really cast Samwise aside emotionally, never dealt with Aragorn’s struggle to accept his role as king, and they must have also left out some sort of Faramir/Eowyn story since they elluded to some sort of connection at the very end.

Also, the fall of the Witchking had to be completely butchered to hell, since it only lastest but a few minutes when the movie had built up to it for so long.

Not to mention the fact that Sarumon and Grima Wormtongue were never mentioned, so um, I guess they evaporated?

Plus, how the hell did Samwise get the ring when Frodo had been taken by the Orcs to the tower? If you read the book, you'd know - however, Frodo's web was intact when the Orcs took him, so it's not as if Sam could have removed it. This is just part of a huge scene that was cut out.

As far as the army of the dead, yeah, they were a bit "Pirates of the Carribean", however, the weak point to me was their bind to Aragorn. It seemed pretty weak that despite fulfilling their pact, they had to ask for permission to be released. It just seemed phony. Especially since they were just going to kill him - I just feel they left something out there as well.

Also, I was at least a little surprised that there was no celebration for their return to the shire. They were great hobbits, and they talked of how famous they'd be - yet when they got home, not one hobbit gave a damn? Hmmmm....

At this point, the Two Towers extended is my favorite.
 
I know with the length of the movie and the amount they needed to fit in to end the trilogy it would be hard, but I cant believe no one has mentioned that they would have liked to see Lord Sauron at least come back one more time at the end, and be defeated by Aragorn and his sword the same way Isildor had done?

On the aspect of "The Eye" (Lord Sauron) how can he obtain the ring in his state? Does the ring have to be thrown into his eye or something, if anything the character that wore the metal of Sauron's mask etc I forgot his name but he was such a good villian and though I loved the scene so much where his Nazgul gets his head chopped off why in gods name would Eowyn have to be the one to kill him??? This scene should of been given to a much more dynamic character (Warrior) = Aragorn or Gandalf!

Lord Sauron coming back and the death of the masked knight are the little things that pissed me off a little, but all in all a great movie, unbelievable battle sequences, best battle sequence ever, and the depth of characters was cool to an extent. So much good scenes I dont want to go into, too much hehe good stuff!
 
I didn't particularly like it that Eowyn killed the Witch-king, mostly because she delivered that cheesy one liner "I am no man" but that's how it went down in the book (minus the one-liner) so there you go.
 
One of my favorite scenes involved the deformed orc easily sidestepping out of the way of a thrown battlement and then spitting on it.
 
Well last night I watched through the extended editions of both FOTR and TTT and am going to see ROTK this evening... I don't think anticipation gets any larger than this ;)

CB :)
 
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