Just saw Return of the King and I was pretty underwhelmed (spoilers)

OK, I'm a longtime fan, of both Tolkien and Jackson, and I have to say that Return of the King isn't the movie it should be. From a technical point of view it is an extraordinarily important film, viewed through the prism of filmmaking, it's marvellous. The sets in particular are among the greatest works of art in movie history. As a movie however...

The Army of the Dead - Frankly, this was poor. The dead themselves look like they were leftovers from The Frighteners. In order for them to be threatening, they should have been a lot less substantial, more shadowlike. The plot changes are unhelpful. In the book, Aragorn leads the dead to Pelargir to destroy the Corsair threat and rally the real strength of Gondor. He then leads the ships up Anduin loaded with three thousand human soldiers to the Harlond.
In the movie, Aragorn leads the dead straight to Minas Tirith. This means that basically, the good guys struggle until they are bailed out by an invincible force of ghosts. This destroys all dramatic tension, as clearly, anything living is going to be swamped by that whic cannot be killed. Furthermore, during the attack on Gondor, we see the ships of the Corsairs sitting threateningly offshore, waiting to strike. The next time we see them, they're full of Aragorn's army of wraiths. Five extra minutes explaining this would've been more effective and dramatic.

Eomer - does he get one line in the whole movie? Talk about underused.

The Battle of the Pelennor Fields - Not good enough. When the Orcs fire projectiles, they leave the trebuchet football-sized. The next time we see them, they are giant chunks of masonry flying through the air. Why do the Gondorians fire masonry back? Is that how they fight in Gondor? Chucking houses at each other?

The 12 false endings - Really bad idea. The movie should end at Aragorn's coronation, if there's not going to be a 'Scouring of the Shire'. I could've done without the new-agey send off at the Grey Havens which makes absolutely no sense to people who haven't read the books.

Frodo's capture by the Orcs - It's a little too convenient that the Orcs all kill themselves as soon as Frodo is in their possession, thus allowing Sam to sneak in and save his friend / lover.

Legolas says the dead are cursed because they betrayed their oath to the last king of Gondor. I'm a geek, I know, but that's inaccurate.

Minas Morgul is obviously a minature. A great minature, but obvious.

Last Battle - Aragorn runs at the enemy. Why? What good will that do?

Does everybody have to do everything right at the edge of a cliff? Have they no common sense?

Bilbo at the end. I'm sorry, but that's a muppet.

Huge battles are actually quite dull. The smaller scale stuff is actually much more effective. Jackson is a master at small group action, not large scale stuff.

Having said all this, as a movie, ROTK is still bloody good. I'm holding Jackson up to insanely high standards, but then, he did set them himself. There are parts of this film that blow every other action / fantasy / whatever film out of the water (Shelob is utterly terrifying and could not be better, Gollum is, as ever, brilliant), unfortunately these moments make the merely ok sections stick out all the more.

I waited 38 years for this movie and it far surpassed anything I ever hoped to put up on the screen.

The multiple endings made sense to me. It could have ended with the coronation BUT this was the story of the Fellowship of the Ring. It was important to show how it ended for the rest of them, not just the King.

At the end of Star Wars 4 the heroes are feted at a huge rally and given awards and stuff. The story could have ended there but there was much more of it to tell. The real story involved working out all the threads, not just blowing up the Death Star.

Return of the King dealt with the climactic battle of THAT age. It would have been cheating to end with the glorious pageantry of the coronation and ignore the bittersweet ending that JRRT spent so much time with. It's just like the Scouring of the Shire. Purists bitch and moan about how that was left out, but the leavetaking at the Gray Havens served the same purpose with much less hyperbole.

Great story, great adaptation.

:)

The movie should end at Aragorn's coronation, the movie is 'The Return of the King' after all.

So was the book, but that didn't stop Tolkien.

The deviations taken by PJ in this film are minor compared to all the changes in TTT, so maybe I'm just in a forgiving mood.

Call myself a geek, do I?

however...

Frodo's capture by the Orcs - It's a little too convenient that the Orcs all kill themselves as soon as Frodo is in their possession, thus allowing Sam to sneak in and save his friend / lover.

Why does people keep saying Sam and Frodo are gay? I mean, I know they practically come out and wanna kiss each other... but Sam obviously liked the ladies.

Maybe *that's* why Frodo left to the land of elves.. ;-)

Still.. Merry and Pippen... no question about it.. they are gay. I mean, you just can't get around it. All they needed was little rainbow flags. :P

As I watched the end of the movie last night, I couldn't help thinking it too. The way they act in the movie is a bit, uh, friendly. I mean I'm sure Frodo was seriously screwed in the end after having carried the ring anyway... but still... :shrug:

love this movie, they are not afraid to show the love they share for themselves and their way of life at the Shire.

If only men were not afraid to show their emotions for each other in this day and age.


PS: Another reason women love these movies is Legolas and Aragorn!!

I find the REAL world far more facinating than anything dreamed up in someone's head.

I find facile dismissals of elements of the real world such as fiction to be ridiculous

everything you said, and then the arrival at Minas Tirith was non-dramatic in the extreme -- here are Tolkien's words:

"And then wonder took him, and a great joy; and he cast his sword up
in the sunlight and sang as he caught it. And all eyes followed his
gaze, and behold! upon the foremost ship a great standard broke, and
the wind displayed it as she turned towards the Harlond. There
flowered a White Tree, and that was for Gondor; but Seven Stars were
about it, and a high crown above it, the signs of Elendil that no lord had borne for years beyond count. And the stars flamed in the
sunlight, for they were wrought of gems by Arwen daughter of Elrond;
and the crown was bright in the morning, for it was wrought of mithril and gold."

This happened AFTER Theoden died -- Eomer is the "he" and had just given up hope

They're going to make stupid mistakes throughout--they made a ton in FOTR and TTT--Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh are not genius adapters, they're just "pretty good" movie screenwriters. So yes, the ghost army fighting at Minas Tirith is *stupid*, for teh reasons you stated and also seeing as they didn't fight at all in the books--mostly the terror they inspired just made the Corsairs flee. As for Frodo and Sam wanting to make manlove, I never quite understood that way of looking at it--I always took it as more a "brothers in arms" kind of connection. You never read about how gay everyone was in "All Quiet on the Western Front". Because it's not a fantasy but "serious" literature.

:)

You can blame Tolkien for that, as the orcs did indeed kill themselves off in the book, as well.

I knew something felt wrong about the army of the dead thing, but I couldn't remember what, since I haven't read the book in a year. For a second there, I thought they were going to have only Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli hop out of those boats, and I'm not sure if that would have been better or worse in terms of believability, and killing what could have been a very dramatic part of the scene.

I felt like the best part of the movie, in terms of drama, was with The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, right when the Rohirrim showed up, rallied, and charged the enemy forces, through to when the Nazgul shot down from the skies. Maybe I'm just dense, but I really wasn't sure what was going to happen there. Sure, there were eight thousand of them, but would the arrows be enough to bring them down? Would they flinch against all of the pikes that were at the front? But no, instead, it was their enemy who flinched, and the Rohirrim trampled right through.

I'm not sure what the most disappointing thing for me was, with departures from the book. Probably the lack of surprise when Eowyn shows up in Theoden's defense, since they didn't make any effort to hide that she was female, or even that she was present during the ride. That's one of the best parts of the book! The separate character of Dernhelm has been established, and you have this image of one pathetic guy trying to defend his King. "No living man may hinder me!" cries the Nazgul. And you know Dernhelm is screwed! But no, he isn't! It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. "But no living man am I!" ...

Mount Doom seemed like it was unnecessarily tampered with, too. They did it pretty good, up until Gollum bites off Frodo's finger. Then, as you are struck with the realization that Frodo failed, Gollum falls off the edge of the cliff, Gandalf's words from The Fellowship of the Ring suddenly come floating back to you - Gollum had an important part to play after all. He's the one who actually destroyed the ring! But in the movie, Frodo gets back up and fights with Gollum, and it was more like Frodo threw Gollum off the side. It is a small change, but I felt like that changed the tone of the scene in a big way.

Well, those were the two big ones, though there were other, less important things that I thought were disappointing. Still, it's a damn good movie, and like you said, the parts that were done well blow every other film out of the water.

-CollegeDude
Time to go feast

I'm guessing they didn't think they'd have enough time for the Dernhelm business. We saw the pains PJ took to introduce the Rohan bunch, Faramir & Denethor in such a way that those not familiar with the books wouldn't go 'who the fuck are these guys?' To do Dernhelm as a surprise to us, he'd have to go through the times to firmly establish that character, only to pull the wool from our eyes. I remember the first time I read the book, thinking, 'oh that's really Eowyn,' and figure many others did too. PJ just took a shortcut is all. The point of Dernhelm was to hide Eowyn's identity from the Rohirrim, not the reader, I thought.

I'm with you about Frodo, though. I thought that cheapened him a little.