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A Return Of The King Review
I must have read the trilogy three or four times since I was first introduced to it via The Hobbit back in grade-school. I am not a purist, but some of the changes Peter Jackson has made along the way weren't to my liking. For example, I didn't like the deviation in Faramir's character during the Two Towers, despite Peter Jackson's claim that he needed to create additional tension and discord beyond what Tolkien included.
The Return of the King has same flaws, but overall I thought it was a more engaging movie than the previous ones. Beware, there are a few spoilers ahead; obviously, most of the Slashdot crowd knows the story in the books, but what will follow should be considered a spoiler, as I am describing Jackson's adaptation of the book.
The movie opens at what I thought to be a strange spot - Smeagol's killing his friend for the Ring; why not put this in the first movie? I think this may have been foreshadowing one of the more prominent departures from the book: Jackson decided to increase the tension between Sam and Frodo over the Ring, with Golem playing on Frodo's Ring-induced distrust. This tension did exist in the book, but Jackson makes it more overt. Personally, I thought it was a little over the top.
Obviously, the book is too large to be made into even a three-hour movie, but I found that one large part is missing that I hoped would be covered: the Battle of Bywater. In the book, when Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin arrive back at the Shire, they discover that Saruman and his thugs have enslaved the Hobbits. I have hope that this may be added into an Extended-Edition (probably due out this time next year).
A good chunk of this movie is spent on the moments leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and the immediate aftermath. As a result, I noticed that there were a lot of speeches of the sabre-rattling kind made by principal characters that I'm sure weren't there in the book -- a kind of Holywood-ization in the Gladiator spirit. It probably makes the movie more interesting to people who haven't and won't read the book.
The humor that could be found in The Two Towers (specifically, Gimli) carries over into The Return of the King. I didn't mind the humor, though I know it's an addition that Jackson made.
Along the way, I noticed other small deviations, but I'll leave those for Tolkien fans to argue over.
Enough complaints; there were a lot of great scenes, and many of the plot lines were handled deftly by Jackson.
Shelob getting Frodo, and Sam taking him for dead, is done particularily well. Jackson didn't change much at all here, and the effects are great.
From the book, I remember a strong impression of bleakness as Sam and Frodo take the final stage of their journey to Mount Doom -- Jackson got that dead-on. Jackson does an excellent job showing the toll that the Ring is taking on Frodo.
The battle outside the walls of Minas Tirith puts the battle of Helm's Deep to shame. The high walls of the city built into the cliff, with a huge army of orcs outside the walls, have to be seen to be believed. I don't actually remember any in-depth description of the battle outside Gondor (in fact, I don't remember any great battle depictions from any of the books -- bad memory?), but Jackson does a great job of providing one. The trebuchets are particularily engaging.
Overall, I would have to say that this was my favorite of the three movies. The movie was a little more grim, a little darker, and showed some of the violence and fighting in a more disturbing fashion. I am hoping that some of what I perceived as shortcomings will be fixed in the Extended Edition (the Two Towers's Extended Edition was a much better movie that the theatre version). I can't wait to see it again.
"...and whose girlfriend couldn't make it to the screening."
Because you hit her with a cinderblock ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Seriously, anybody who's been to any of the 12:01am showings for movies like LotR or Star Wars knows what I'm talking about. You'll get hordes of people dressed up like Gandalf (albeit some morbidly obese variant of him) trying to hit you with a broom handle that they insist on calling a quarterstaff.
On a side note, what sort of self-respecting /.er would be wary of spoilers regarding LotR?
Most of you already know this, but: The scouring of the shire scene will not be in the extended edition - Jackson didn't like it and never filmed it...but 10 minutes of other scenes with Saruman and Wormtongue will be back for the DVD.
The ride of the Rohirrim, the chapter covering the beginning of the battle of the Pelennor fields, is an incredible passage; probably my favourite little bit of fiction ever. I suggest you re-read before claiming status as Tolkien fan.
Spoilers? Like what? Gollum is Frodo's father? Sam tying the deflector dish to the warp drive to escape Mordor? OTOH, with what I've heard is being cut, maybe I shouldn't be suprised.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Erm, well there are currently a couple of popular LotR video game titles EA Games has published under Jackson's license, and one or two others in production. I think that would be the key to getting this kind of preview. So go write some games, or no movie for you!
Oh man! That just ruined it for me!
Wasn't this film originally going to be called "Revenge of the King", but they changed the name after some marketing material had already been prepared?
I have two exams on the 17th day and seeing as how I flunked the midterms for both classes, I won't be given a B.Sc in May if I go.
That being said I have tickets for 12:01.
Who cares if you flunk a couple in the long run anyways?
I think changes between any movie made from a book or books, even the beloved Tolkien trilogy, are a necessary evil as part of the media switch. I guess I'm even geek enough to rather have seen Glorfindel instead of Liv Tyler on Frodo's crossing to Rivendell. The problem, time and space notwithstanding, is the style of book, and whether or not that can be adequately expressed. Whether it's Lowry's "Under the Volcano" or Herbert's "Dune," it's difficult to transform words and thoughts into pictures and movement without some loss. As a fan, I'm willing to give the director/creative team a lot of leeway and will suspend my interior cinema of what I think the characters should look like in order to enjoy what's on the screen. So, on with the show.
no disrespect, but I really liked the last chapters of the book. I always got the feeling that when Tolkien was writing about Great Events he used the more poetic and formal language (i.e., more like Yoda-speak with back-assward syntax); when dealing with Hobbits, he (puposely?) slipped into more "Common" speech. While I agree that the style was different, it think it was done on purpose and with great effect. It FELT like they were coming home when I read it. It also sets up the idea that, although the Shire has been rescued from Saruman, Frodo has sustained too much hurt to remain and departs over the Sea with Bilbo. It's not as bittersweet if he just gets up and leaves coming back from Gondor. Although I can understand why PJ left it out of the movie (even accounting for the fact that he is on record of hating the "Scouring" chapter).
NO CARRIER
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally would miss the hobbit-battle at the end against the orcs. There's just something cool about little guys getting all ferocious and kicking the ass of bigger, evil types. I can just imagine a line of hobbits lined up with pitchforks and rakes, charging at half a dozen orcs, and the orcs turning to run. Good stuff. :)
I imagine that this end battle is what Lucas shaped his Endor battle after, to a degree - at least in concept. Little 'cute' guys kicking the asses of much bigger, more agressive baddies in a humorous manner.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You've never read LotR? That's it, hand in your geek identification card, turn in your slashdot account and go on over to Fark.
Go now, and no making sad puppy dog faces.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
I saw it about 2 weeks ago. Peter Jackson was there afterwards with the two writers for an interview moderated by Carrie Fisher (who not only hadn't read the books, but I got the feeling she hadn't seen the previous movies either. In any event, she really had no interesting questions or comments of her own and relied on the audience to supply them.)
Okay, now that you all envy me, here's my mini-review:
It was really, really good. 3x the special effects of the last one. Spider (Shelob? or something like that) was AWESOME. Battle scenes were great. The Orlando Bloom elephant takedown will be talked about (and certainly parodied) for years. Gollum is constantly good in every scene he's in. His acting is awesome-- he gives Sam this one look look (it's in the trailer) that basically says "you're so screwed" while simultaneously kissing Frodo's ass. Sean Astin gives his best performance ever as the devoted best friend. There's a real cool "woman vs. funky snake-headed dragon" faceoff. The end battle sequence is cool, as is the volcano stuff-- flaming lava balls flying through the sky like giant comets. The sound was cranked up when I saw it, and the screaming, screeching audio was top-notch.
The bad: Some boring/slow parts, including the Liv Tyler subplot and the now-notorious "thirteen endings" featuring tons of Unexplained Stuff-- giant eagles, a mysterious boat trip to...somewhere. And at three hours and twenty minutes, you really really start to feel it at the end.
That said, I'm getting to see ANOTHER advanced screening tomorrow! It's my favorite of the three by far, and certainly one of the best movies of the year.
As far as Peter Jackson-- much of what he said at that screening has been reported widely already-- he's doing king kong (one of the films that got him interested in filmmaking in the first place), he wants to do Hobbit but there are legal challenges at the moment, and he talked a bit about making LOTR vs. "Meet the Feebles". He said LOTR was infinitely more complex, but it was just as difficult to do MTF because he didn't have all the people working on it. What else... he talked a bit about adapting the work-- the first thing he did was summarize the books into a ninety page outline-- 30 pages per book. He also talked about getting the rights to the book, working with the Weinsteins (apparently Bob didn't get the concept until he realized that the guy with the sword, axe, and arrows were "specialists") at Mirimax before switching to New Line, and how sometimes he'd be shooting four units simultaneously.
I don't know if anyone's even gonna read this, so I guess i'll finish with that. The point is, it's good. See it. You'll like it.
The movies are a lot more about humans than the books were. Tolkien created the hobbits and so had an affinity for them. So the entire book really is about how different the hobbits are from the humans.
For example, the book starts out with Frodo sitting on the most important thing in the world for 20 years. Then Gandalf tells him he must leave the shire immediately and he still stays for another 6 months.
The movie is much more human-centric. See how Boromir and such are changed.
As such, there really is no way to put the scouring of the shire in. The climax is when the entire world is saved, especially the human world. There is no way to follow that with saving a small group of shut-ins.
If I were filming the books, I'd do the same thing.
The scouring of the shire was one of my favorite parts of the books. It made the rest of the books more real for me. You don't just blow up the Death Star and go home to a world that is suddenly rosy and new.
Also, it really showed the character development that had taken place. Merry, Pipin, Frodo, and Sam would have been killed or they would have silently obeyed their captors like the rest of the hobbits if they hadn't gone on the journey they had. Yet they still remembered their roots well enough to know how to rouse their old friends and relations in a time of desperate need. Merry and Pippin really grew up and came into their own in those chapters.
I think an author would be hard pressed to come up with a better denoumont to saving the world. It brought you down slowly from the destruction of the ring. The book did not end with a jolt, nor did I find the last half of the Return of the King to be booring. The level of excitement died out gradually, as day-to-day business returned very gradually, not to normal, but back to a new normal because nothing could be as it was.
Anyway, I was sorry it didn't appear in the movie, but I've still got the books. The first two movies were many times better than I thought they would be and I enjoyed them emensely. I liked that women had a more prominent role in the movies. A feminist couldn't read the Lord of The Rings without grimacing several times but they could watch the movies. I also thought the Two Towers did a brilliant job portraying Gollum and the Hobbits. They were just as I imagined them.
Though I actually liked Tom Bombadil, cutting him was a good call. He was basically irrelevant to the rest of the story. I would have made some of the battle scenes shorter (particularly in the Two Towers - they only made it half-way through the book!). Then we could have seen the scouring of the shire. But I'm really splitting hairs here. The movies are great. I can hardly wait until next week!
Two words: Library Card. It's free and widely available in most "civilized" countries.
Matt Damen in "Good Will Hunting" made fun of a student for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Harvard education you could get for $1.97 in late fees at your local library. As a non-college graduate who works with people whose average education is a Masters in CS, and whose wife has a Masters from Harvard, I can tell you he has a good point.
The books are great. Start with The Hobbit. They are my favorite books I have ever read.
P.S. If you should think from my post that a college degree is unnesecary, you should know that I am painfully finishing my college degree after a 10 year absence - one course at a time while working 40 hours a week and commuting 1.5 hours each way. I thought I was smart enough to drop out of college, but now I'm eating my humble pie - and I can tell you it tastes like shit! I think those people with MS degrees make more than I do even if I work harder and know more than some of them. It can also really help when applying for jobs. I want one (an MS) but I need my BA first.
My data set has only one sample, so I have no idea how common this is, but a company getting an advanced screening can be a matter of the movie studio just returning a favor.
The company I worked for when the movie "The Sixth Day" came out got an advanced screening as thanks for having loaned Phoenix Pictures some high-tech looking equipment that was used in some of the sets. So, the company reserved a movie theater for a private screening for employees and friends. AFAIK, Phoenix only provided the film. I think the company paid for the theatre time. Some of our equipment also made brief appearances in sets of all three of The Matrix movies, and in "Mission to Mars", but there were no advanced screenings of those.
Ok, so maybe that could be considered 5 samples, only one of which resulted in an advanced screening. So it's probably not very likely without having some major, high-profile, connection to the movie. But it's definitely not impossible.
Darth Vader is Luke's father. Apollo 13 makes it home safely. Hal9000 kills the crew. Sarah Connor crushes the Terminator in a metal press. Khan is killed in the Genesis explosion while Kirk escapes. Spiderman kills the Green Goblin. ET phones home and a spaceship comes to rescue him. Ripley blows the Alien out an airlock. Major Kong rides an H-Bomb to the target and the Doomsday Weapon is detonated. The Planet of the Apes is really Earth. Butch and Sundance get killed by the Peruvian Army. Spartacus gets crucified. Frodo throws Gollum and the Ring into the pit, defeating Evil.
Yes, I am constantly harrased by people that upon learning of my geekness barrage me with questions about fantasy novels. And here all this time I thought it was just me.
The scouring of the Shire is the _point_ of the _entire_trilogy_! The message is about Man growing up and taking personal responsibility for himself and his world, and is summed up perfectly in those chapters. Personally, I've liked the films, but they are _not_ The Lord of the Rings; Jackson has changed the entire focus of the story (witness also the presence of elves at Helm's Deep, which detracts mightily from the meaning of the battle).
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
Look, people, this has been stated since 1998--there will be no Scouring of the Shire. It was not filmed. It will not be in the Extended Edition. The homage to it was the vision in the Mirror of Galadriel.
In every single LOTR article, someone brings up how they hope for the Scouring, when it's already been covered that it won't appear. Peter Jackson has been open about this since the very beginning. Stop talking about how you hope it appears!
"Sufferin' succotash."