I finally saw “Return of the King” yesterday (life with two four-year-old boys keeps my moviegoing to the bare minimum). It delivers exactly what the first two films suggested it would — which is to say, it’s a marvel. There are certain spots where director Peter Jackson actually improves upon Tolkien: It’s been a few years since my last re-reading of the trilogy, but I don’t recall the lighting of the beacons from Gondor to Rohan being such a soaring moment, with what look like isolated Himalayan-high eyries passing their message across the roof of the world; and Aragorn’s passage through the Paths of the Dead feels as if it has some extra fillips of chill. Jackson closely follows Tolkien’s script for the ebb and flow of fortune during the Battle of the Pellenor Fields, and the result, with bows to Kurosawa, is a battle scene up there with cinema’s all-time landmarks. And the exquisite presentation of Gollum’s tormented split personality, begun in “The Two Towers,” runs its awful, world-changing course.
There are of course some minor disappointments: Denethor is turned from a figure of Shakespearian tragedy into more of a Jacobean-ogre caricature; the loss of “The Scouring of the Shire” (entirely understandable from the vantage of running time) upsets the balance of Tolkien’s bittersweet conclusion. But overall, the movie is an improbably wonderful achievement, a cinematic realization of Tolkien’s world that can proudly stand next to its original. When Barad-Dur collapses, in ceaseless cascades of plunging ebony masonry, it’s as if all the movie trilogy’s vertiginous pinnacles of terror — from the bridge of Khazad-Dum to Orthanc to Cirith Ungol — are falling at once, and forever.
BONUS LINK: A research project exploring reactions to the LotR movies around the world needs you to answer its questionnaire. [Link courtesy Henry Jenkins]
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