The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: The review
10:06pm, 17th December 2003
Barring a surprise release of Back to the Future 4 on new year’s eve, Pirates of the Caribbean was the best film of 2003.
Return of the King was close though! Like all big franchises, the writing let it down in the end. Good, but not good enough. Certainly couldn’t compete with the Pirates script.
I would’ve prefered fewer, or tighter, endings, less teary eyed manipulation, and a half hour slideshow of New Zealand tacked onto the end. Prepare for spoilers:
Good bits and references
- The introductory flashback.
- The lighting of the beacons. I want more NZ photography!
- Monty Python’s Black Knight’s sword-through-the-visor attack.
- Legolas downing a mumakil by flying a snowspeeder round its legs. At least that’s what I assume they were alluding to.
- Sam Raimi tribute camera movement at the entrance to the Paths of the Dead. The deadites were good all round.
- Sam’s rendition of “Get away from her you BITCH!” as “Get away from him you FILTH!” However, the power loader was more convincing than the Light of Elendil.
- The bald tattooed guy riding the mumakil.
- Minas Tirith’s suicide cliff, and the resulting flaming suicide plummet.
- “Release the prisoners!”
- Gandalf riding up and around Minas Tirith.
- Minas Morgul. Dark, and yet green at the same time!
- All the bits where the ring made the sound go funny.
- Gollum dies happy. Star Trek II is now officially retroactively a ripoff.
- People standing, sitting and even sleeping right on the edge of chasms.
- Sloth from The Goonies.
- Gimli jokes fortunately toned down.
Bad bits
- Dorset Blue Vinny dialogue.
- Endless sabre rattling and flowery speech.
- Stuck in the middle with you didn’t play as Denethor prepared himself for the pyre.
- And what was he pouring on himself? Had Gondor invented the catalytic cracker? The only flammable liquids they possessed should’ve been dark and sludgy.
- Fellowship theme > Rohan theme > Gondor theme. Howard Shore has the brain eater.
- Gandalf beating people over the head with his staff. Goddamit Jim, he’s a wizard, not a
doctorsoldier! - No Saruman. No palantir development.
- Strong echoes of the more boring parts of The Two Towers.
- “Arwen’s life force is bound to the ring”? Where did that come from? Where did it go?
- Go Go Yubari applied mace-feer to The Bride more convincingly than the Witch King did to Eowyn. They both got spiked in the head in the end, too.
- Good guys: white skin, blue eyes, perfect teeth; fighting for the West. Bad guys: black skin, evil eyes, horrible teeth; savages from the South and East. Unavoidable given the source material, but don’t think we didn’t notice.
- Gimli jokes unfortunately not entirely absent.
Conclusion
Fellowship: 10, Towers: 9, King: 9.5. Arise, sir Peter, I think.
Ugh - no palantir stuff?
*sulks*
I haven’t seen it yet so I shouldn’t really have read this, but seeing as I know what’s going to happen anyway I don’t think it matters!
Also - Pirates of the Carribean was amazing - I came out of the cinema jumping up and down and pretending to sword-fight!
Ah don’t worry, there is *some* palantir stuff. Just not much :(
If you honestly believe that pirates was the best movie of the year? Boy lack of imagination and short attention spans are becoming the true plagues of america and it’s inhabitants. Pirates had a weak and fairly predictable storyline, it was a decent movie to watch as it didn’t really require any real thinking or any real attention, but it was no return of the king not even close. By the way did you forget the retarded corset joke in pirates?? How could you even say anything about Gimli with such hilarious dialogue like that being used.
> Boy lack of imagination and short attention spans are becoming
> the true plagues of america and it’s inhabitants.
Oh man.
First, lol at the trolls you’re collecting :) Second, DUDE, you didnt see this with lsd! He’s a cunt, he kept leaning over and making gay jokes at the hobbits. You’ll recall the hearty laughs of seeing Battle Royale for the first time, and when in the nth ending scene Frodo says ‘There’s one last thing I must give you’ and Andy whispers ‘THE MONEY SHOT’, you can imagine how hard I had to supress my natural urges. Oh my!
Hehe, there were so many gay moments with the hobbits, with Sam standing over frodo after the orcs took him away and Frodo was nekkid… I was waiting for them to start somthing :)
Also - at the end when they’re all jumping on Frodo’s bed I expected them to strip and have a pillow fight - but I’m wierd.
Favourite lines:
‘What’s this stuff? It’s so sticky!’
and…
‘The shiny shirt is mine!’
:)
All in all, great film - but James - have you seen the extended version of the Two towers - there’s a cool scene where Merry and Pippin find a load of pipe weed and food and feast :D
seen starship trooper yes? brain eater = http://www.poster.net/starship-troopers/starship-troopers-big-brain-bug-captured-3700149.jpg
I was thinking more along the lines of:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/laith.htm