The King, He's Back

The Return of the King has been out for five days now, so the hard-core fans have mostly seen it already. Those who haven't seen it are advised to skip the following, as it will be massively spoiler-ridden.

SPOILERS for The Return of the King

As usual, waiting a few days to post about a topic has made my job easier. A lot of the things I'd like to say have been said by Timothy Burke. While I don't agree with everything he says, I agree with most of it. Of course, the existence of his review won't stop me from repeating some of what he says... Kate posted some early comments as well. And, of course, a wealth of material is available in this Making Light post and comment thread. The main result of a lot of the comments is to remind me that I really can't relate very well to the hardest of the hard-core Tolkien fans, but it's fascinating stuff, as always.

Overall, I thought it was a terrific movie. Everything just looks fantastic, and they did a wonderful job with a lot of the key scenes. Minas Tirith looks amazing, the Ride of the Rohirrim was great, Shelob was spectacularly creepy, and they nailed the tone of the whole thing.

This is a weblog, though, so anything I post about it has to include some bitching. In order to end on an up note, though, I'll get the negative stuff out of the way first:

Changes I Really Didn't Like:

• The biggest problem I had with the movie, in terms of story changes, has to be the end of the Ring. In the book Gollum gets the Ring away from Frodo, and topples into the fire while capering about celebrating. It's fairly important to the story, and to Tolkien's brand of Catholicism, that the Ring is destroyed by chance, and not through any action of Frodo's. Having Frodo attack Gollum, and cause him to topple off the cliff undermines that point.
• Arwen. I don't know what they were thinking with this-- like Aragorn really needs her to be wasting away in order to fight Sauron.... I actually approved of the expansion of her character in the first movie, but after that, she just fell apart.
• Denethor's death. The image of him lying down calmly, Palantir in hand, and dying on the pyre is very powerful. Him running out of the room, and leaping off a cliff was just silly.
  

Article Author: Chad Orzel

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