290. The Lord Of the Rings - The Return Of The King; movie review

 

THE LORD OF THE RINGS - THE RETURN OF THE KING

Cert 12A

193 mins

BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence, horror, injury detail

There we have it - 12 hours of Lord of The Rings over three weeks have given me a whole new perspective on cinema's most successful trilogy.

I have been transformed from bored onlooker to fan.

Indeed, I was on tenterhooks as Frodo (Elijah Wood) battled against the odds to destroy the ring and bring down evil Sauron.

I surprised myself by accepting that a three-foot-tall man/boy could be pitted against the most powerful negative force in all of creation.

But, as Gandalf (Ian McKellen) says: "Hobbits really are amazing creatures. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month and yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you."

The future of the world is in Frodo's hands and Wood does a grand job of showing him fighting against adversity while also being tempted away from the goodness of his best friend Sam (Sean Astin) by the duplicitous Gollum (the wonderful Andy Serkis)

Meanwhile, as they are trying to find their way to Mordor (via the lair of the scariest spider in cinema), their small band of friends are trying to see off armies of Orcs.

There is little doubt that the most memorable elements of The Lord Of the Rings finale are the dazzling battle scenes and the incredible special effects.

But we should not underestimate how the importance of high-quality acting to Peter Jackson.

McKellen, Bernard Hill, Viggo Mortensen are multi-award winners and each have great screen presence.

So, why did the trilogy not resonate first time around?

I reckon it was down to my memory not being sharp enough to cope with the year's gap between each episode and immediately plug into the narrative.

Seeing the three movies more closely together has revealed their brilliance to me.

I heartily recommend doing so to anyone who wasn't enraptured by seeing them over a couple of years at the cinema.

Overall, it has been my best movie experience of the lockdown period.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that I found its last scene curiously unsatisfactory and rather baffling.

Reasons to watch: The conclusion to the most successful movie trilogy in history

Reasons to avoid: If you haven't recently watched the previous episodes

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: None

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 9/10

Did you know? The Return of the King, won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for at the 76th Academy Awards in Los Angeles. This set a record for the largest clean sweep and equalled the highest number of Oscars, achieved by Ben Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997). None were for its acting.

The final word. Peter Jackson: "We always felt that Return of the King was, for us, the strongest film, simply on the basis that it had a climax, and an emotional payoff. The reason why you make a trilogy is because you want to get to the last one as the last chapter is the reason for the first two even existing, so it always felt the most comfortable of the scripts to us." Female.com.au

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