Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

January 30, 2004

Scale: 9/10 Should you see it? Yes How’s the writing? Very good Any gaping holes in the plot? No What stands out? Sequels usually stink, these are great See it in the theater or wait to rent? Theatre

Ok, everyone else has weighed in there, so what else can I add? 3rd movies in trilogies are notoriously bad (see Return of the Jedi, The Godfather 3, and Matrix Revolutions.) This was every bit as good as the second (which was every bit as good as the first).

Now I know there are going to be rabid fans who complain about something that was left out/changed from the books. Don’t bother. The books were immense, and I doubt anyone could get in perfect.

My only complaint was that the movie seemed to end about 4 times, and could have done with a bit more editing (I know, it’s nearly heretical to say, but it really was too long). With the combined length of all 3 movies there were really four Lord of the Rings movies. The battle scenes could have been shorter. After awhile I was thinking, “Ok, I get it, lots of people dying.”

Minor complaints over an excellent movie, and excellent series.

  • Norma

    Actually it’s not good if you haven’t read the book or don’t even know it exists. Tolkien’s story, even when butchered by Jackson and his two partners in crime, is still better than Armageddon, Hulk or some other Hollywood crap.

    But if you read the book (and even if you haven’t, but have some common sense), you will be left wondering, what the hell is happening on the screen. I don’t want to go into details, because it’s a pointless waste of time (less pointless than watching ROTK was for me), I’ll just say that IMNSHO it was a terrible book->movie conversion.

  • Jimbob

    Well first of all I agree with most everything you said. The movie was great but could have been cut shorter. I loved the movie, loved the books (I think Norma’s observation that Jackson butchered Tolkien and that it was a terrible book/movie conversion is ridiculous—like to see her take on the challenge of filming LOTR) but I just kept thinking, how many scenes of people crying and holding dying or wounded people can we have? That got old. Regardless, it was a great experience.

    I do think one of your observations needs correction—this isn’t a sequel. The three movies are one movie. The three books are one book. You can’t really separate the movies or the books because Tolkien wrote one book that his publisher chopped into three. In fact, if movie audiences were used to sitting through 10 hour movies, I’m sure Peter Jackson would have made this into one big honking film. He even says in the DVD that he hopes people will watch the DVDs consecutively, going from one right to the next to see it as it was meant to be seen (something to that effect).

  • obmij

    i think the moovies were really good especially if you havent read the book but if you have then, you might have left the theatre feeling unfulfilled and truthfully they left out a lot of stuff i realise that they couldnt have put in everything that was in the book but this conversion lost so much of the book

    i personly think that good thought the movies were they could have been alot better if they had made them how the books were done coz originally the story of lotr was chopped into 3 parts and each part was then chopped into 2 books making a total of not 3 as people now think but 6 books sure if they had meade 6 movies it would have taken them longer it would have been too much to see in one sitting. But thats why the book was chopped up i mean who unless they had a compulsion would pick up a book that is huge and just read it they could have made them so much better had they taken the time to do it properly

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