Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Cast
Sean Astin .... Sam
Sean Bean .... Boromir
Cate Blanchett .... Galadriel
Orlando Bloom .... Legolas
John Rhys-Davies .... Gimli
Billy Boyd .... Pippin
Elijah Wood .... Frodo
Directed by
Peter Jackson
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
9/10. I felt this movie was probably the best out of the three. For it's 3 and a half hour showing, it kept me in my seat (while trying to move around to get comfortable), and I was interested in what would happen, but then again I could have guessed it and been right, which I was.
Right off the bat, you have to notice the small details or in this case the C.G.I., which I guess wasn't a small detail after all. It's a rather good fun to watch elephants stomp on some people, and you realize that it would hurt if was you or a stunt man. There were many fights and you felt yourself wondering if they were C.G.I. or if they were real. The fight scene was good for it's whole entirety. I was on the edge of my seat wondering who was killed and how many. You had to watch the Orcs fall in their faces, and the elephants fall on 200 people. I also liked the ghost riders. Try and hit them, and your sword went through them, but they could hit and kill you.
I noticed that Gandalf used magic only once. Now, if you were a wizard, wouldn't you use your wizarding skills to your advantage? Maybe kill an extra few people here and there. Then again, the movie would have gone faster, and Peter Jackson would have stuck more material in there. Ack, not a longer movie!
The acting throughout the movie was good. Though the person that really should get a good review for their acting was Sean Astin. He had emotion, and his character filled out to be the most potential out of all of them. Elijah Wood didn't blink once, probably because he was a zombie throughout most of the movie. Ian Mckellan was good and even funny when he conked the king of Gondor. Orlando Bloom was himself, attracting girls to see him, and then shooting everyone with arrows. Though another person that was extremely good was John Rhys-Davies as Gimili. He always had funny, witty remarks that made the whole entire audience laugh.
Some points where I had to mark down LOTR: TROTK, were its extreme longness (3 and a half hours), and a couple scenes here and there, plus the three false endings. The beginning scene where Gollum is choking his friend seemed extremely cheaply made, and made at the last possible moment before the movie's release. It was really unnessacery, and could have probably cut off about 5 minutes of the runtime. The three false endings were oddly played out. Usually when a movie goes to black at the end, you realize, "hey the movies over." So, music was going a little and the blackness. I remembered that there were several endings, so I sat.
All in all, this is a good wrap up of the triolgy, and when they package it together it'll be like 100 dollars. Anyway, go out and see it because it's very good
Rater #2
8/10. New Line Cinema made a gamble financing the huge Lord of the Rings
films. If the first one went big, then the other two would do even
bigger. If it failed, then New Line would probably collapse, because
after financing the huge movies, they had no way to recuperate their
money that they lost. Thankfully for New Line, the first one was a
huge hit, and the second, even bigger. However, the third looks to be
the biggest, with good reason. It's the best one of this mediocre
series.
Continuing where The Two Towers left off, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood)
is carrying the ring, whose powers, besides corrupting those who have
it, are never shown in this epic (which would have been a nice
reminder to people like myself who haven't really even thought of the
series since the last one). He is accompanied by his fellow hobbit
Sam (Sean Astin) and weird former-hobbit Gollum/Smeagol (Andy Serkis)
to destroy the ring in the fires of Mount Doom, the only place where
it can be destroyed. Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), a human,
Legolas (Orlando Bloom), an elf, and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), a
dwarf, go looking for Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy
Boyd), two other hobbits who are part of the broken fellowship that
was made to carry the ring to its death. There's a couple more sub-
plots, which bloat out this three-hour twenty-minute epic.
I think the main reason that Return of the King is the best in the
trilogy is because its main fight scene isn't overdone and isn't that
long. Unlike The Two Towers, it was never boring. And, instead of
just a bunch of computer generated people fighting, there were also
computer generated elephants stomping on the computer generated
people that were fighting. It was something new, not just
swordfighting, which can get very boring if you're forced to watch it
for half an hour.
As Peter Jackson said in the MAD magazine parody "The Bored of the
Rings: The 2+ Hours", "I have learned to speak fluent Elvish. The
only thing I haven't learned is the word `cut'." I agree. It is
amazing how a mainstream audience can sit through a long movie such
as this, and it is unnecessarily long. As I've said with the other
movies in the series, many of the too-many subplots could have been
taken out. Although it may not have been true to Tolkein's original
books, books are often truncated down for movies. With that, it may
have been easier to sit through all three. But, amazingly enough,
this one didn't seem that long, except for the endings (which I'll
get to later).
There seems to be certain rules that the Lord of the Rings movies must
follow. Every character must die at least once. However, the good
guys can mysteriously come back to life, sometimes with a name change
(as in Gandalf's color change). Half of the excellent cinematography
must be spent on showing us that it is not being shot inside of a
soundstage, and the other half must be spent on grotesque close-ups
of uncharacterized Orcs that look and speak like Yoda. Towns can be
randomly placed on huge hills.
Return of the King is a very riveting experience. Because this is
like nothing else, you cannot be certain that the ring is actually
going to be destroyed. That, since you've been with these characters
for nine hours, you're basically yelling at the screen what you want
to happen.
The romantic subplot (or subplots, I'm really not sure) are really
unnecessary. I didn't remember who these people were, and, yet again,
they just come in randomly. To tell the truth, I don't really care
that Aragorn loves this person, and she doesn't love back, or vice
versa. It's little things like that that make the movie a little less
enjoyable. There's about three women in the movie, and yet they're
the thing the average movie goer doesn't like about the movie.
Towards the end of the movie, I thought it to be directed by Steven
Spielberg. There are about five false endings to it. If I can recall
to last night correctly, after each, the entire audience was about to
get up and leave after each one. In fact, the person I was sitting
next to said, after the final ending, "Is it finally over?" She loved
the movie, but the endings don't do the movie justice.
The real strong point of the movie isn't the special effects to make
Gollum (who went from lovable fool in The Two Towers to just annoying
in Return of the King), nor the battle sequences, but Sean Astin's
acting. Although he is a hobbit, he still portrayed human emotions,
and made him the character in the movie I cared about the most. Wood
seems to have taken way too many eyedrops; I don't recall seeing him
blink once. Ian McKellan, as Gandalf, does barely wizarding, making
the fact that he is a wizard a moot point.
I was surprised by Return of the King. Instead of something mediocre
like I was expecting, it turns out to be one of the better movies of
the year.
Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and frightening images.
Running time: 201 minutes
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