Return of the King
Dec 21, 2003
The first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, was as beautiful as it was shallow. The extended version provided the flesh it so required and turned it into a pretty good movie after all.
The second movie, The Two Towers, was a far more delightful experience, as it had both a beginning and an end, characters with flesh and tremendous scenes. The extended version was even better; it provided more flesh, more depth to the characters, which, of course, made their adventures, their fates, all the more interesting.
In the cases of both movies, although far more prominently in The Two Towers, it seems that director Peter Jackson prioritized action sequences over character depth. Sad, but not devastating.
The third movie, The Return of the King, was easily the best of the three. That is, in and of itself, a wonderful thing, as series of movies tend to get worse by each movie, even when they're written as a trilogy. I enjoyed The Return of the King tremendously, it was a great piece of entertainment. Now that the feeling and the experience of it has settled, however, it's become sadly obvious to me that the movie is merely a piece of impeccable entertainment; it bares no significant weight. It's just an illusion.
There's a big difference between an impeccable film like The Godfather, and impeccable entertainment like Return of the King (stupid comparison, but a common one still). Moments from impeccable movies stay with you; expressions, scenes so tense, so sharp they can be cut with a knife, like the one from The Godfather where Michael is to murder two men in a restaurant. It doesn't have tens of thousands of soldiers in it; there are but three people involved, only one of them is shooting. But, somehow, it is a scene of epic proportions. That is what great film is about.
While Return of the King isn't even close to that league, and even if the comparison is ridiculous in itself, the movie has moments which, through pure film direction, was made great. I was taken quite aback when I saw fear struck into the eyes of the Orcs as King Theoden's men attacked. It was a huge moment, probably the one I will remember better than any other moment from that movie.
I'll mostly remember how entertaining it was, how much fun I had seeing it; I'll remember moments from the experience of watching the movie, far more than I'll remember moments from the movie itself. It is with no small amount of confusion I deem this the best movie theatre experience of several years. Unfortunately, it being great entertainment rather than great film, the experience ended as I exited the theatre.
Comments
I liked this trilogy of cinematic beauty due to the nature of good versus evil. It reminded me of the battles like Armegaddon from the Bible's New Testament and the epic war in Hinduism's Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita.
I liked many of the different universal teachings that were expounded throughout this series of films. In the latest installment, it was courage, even in the face of sure defeat.
Comment by Swami Prem at 22:45, 21 Dec, 2003 #
Tomas: I don't know if you've read the books, but I think it would have been rather weird if Peter Jackson had added more depth to the characters, as he would have had to make it all up. Tolkien didn't put much effort into developing his characters, so the films naturally had to be a bit 'shallow'. I agree that there was a little too much left out sometimes though. Faramir's appearance in The Two Towers got a whole different meaning with the extended dvd version, just to name an example.
Comment by Pat at 19:07, 22 Dec, 2003 #
Pat: I haven't read the book. What does and what does not happen in the book is completely irrelevant though, as the notion that you "have to read the book to enjoy the movie" is completely absurd.
The characters in the first movie are about as thick as cardboard figures, especially "the dwarf" and "the elf" are extremely shallow figures which aren't fleshed out properly until the second movie.
Jackson did add and he did subtract from the original story, I don't see any reason why he couldn't add flesh. And, obviously, he could, as the extended version gives the characters more depth. He prioritized action over character depth, that's all.
Comment by Tomas at 19:55, 22 Dec, 2003 #
Tomas: I thought "Fellowship" often visually beautiful, but the extended version more humanly involving. Pat brings in a major point - Jackson's challenge was to make the unreal people of a fantasy world matter. "The Godfather" is celluloid, but its seems to have real lives in a real world. Outside the Shire, can anyone tell me what work the people of Middle Earth do, or how vast armies are shod, clothed and fed? The entire world is a CGI special effect, without gravity. This may be a peril of CGI armies for filmmakers: after the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the Fellowship comes out to the battlefield to look for their friends. They're the only ones there. After any real battle near a city, the field would be filled with people looking for lovers, husbands, sons, brothers etc. But the army of ROTK is no more truly alive than Aragorn's Army of the Dead.
Comment by F J at 07:24, 26 Dec, 2003 #
I wouldn't say that what happened in the books is irrelevant, since Jackson meant all along to stay as true to the books as possible, something which I think he did pretty well. My point was that he didn't really prioritize anything over character depth, since nearly all the depth in the books is in fact in the films as well. Why should he add more, if his intention was to stay true to the original story? LOTR is simply too well-known and too read to change too much. I know how silly this sounds, but it would almost be like changing history. What Jackson did leave out were the long journeys that would have been very tedious to watch on film, and by doing so he got the action scenes closer together. I hardly think it would have been motivated to add more phony character depth to fantasy films like these. As you said, there is a huge difference between an extravagant piece of entertainment placed in a foreign world and a very human and realistic film like The Godfather.
Comment by Pat at 20:39, 26 Dec, 2003 #
Somehow my last sentences were lost: You can enjoy both, but in very different ways. What would the world be without diversity?
Comment by Pat at 20:44, 26 Dec, 2003 #
I must say, with the risk of being flamed to utter death, that I liked the films better than the books. Sure, the books are nice and all, but they are pretty boring and tedious to read. The films sums it all up pretty well, and I don't have to read Tolkiens silly descriptions of a tree or something which goes on for about 20 pages. All in all, I'm much more happy with the time I spent watching the films (even though I fell asleep during helms deep in TTT) than the time I spent reading the books.
Comment by Marcus Stade at 21:57, 26 Dec, 2003 #
Pat: You're missing the point. A character mustn't go through difficult trials and tribulations completely alien to the original story for character depth to be established. It can be as little as a few lines of dialogue, a moment from the character's past, anything. Anything that shows that the character on screen is alive; that the character has feelings, has opinions, has a past, has anything, or, lacks anything. This has nothing to do with "changing the story". And, since the characters have more depth in the extended version, it is evidently possible without doing anything of the sort.
Knowing the characters is what makes us care about their mission, or their downfall. If they were all strangers to us, wether they succeed or not would be irrelevant. This is nothing new, or strange, this is script writing lesson one.
Comment by Tomas at 22:28, 26 Dec, 2003 #
Watching the fellowship yesterday I felt that alot of the scenes don't flow when it comes to lighting, something of which I tend to notice. It was a shame really, since it stuck out in every scene after the thought. Rotk Tuesday =]
Comment by cyberhill at 08:41, 27 Dec, 2003 #
Tomas: Sorry, I see what you mean now. It is indeed clear that most of the scenes cut for the cinematic release and then added to the dvd were of that nature (adding depth), which of course would mean that Jackson prioritized the action sequences.
Marcus: Your opinion is very common, and not at all worthy of flaming. Tolkien's books are linguistically brilliant, but told in a way much understandably not appreciated by everyone. I myself find the books very entertaining, but in a different way than the films which are all great as well.
Comment by Pat at 00:38, 28 Dec, 2003 #
Yes Tomas, pure entertainment. I don't think the film/series could begin to compete with something like 'The Godfather' without adding many extra hours to its length to allow for that level of character development -- and that would just be too long. Moreover, they missed huge opportunities to enhance the depth of the film through the dialogue. In the scene in front of the gates of Morador, didn't Aragon's words to the troops seem dry and all too brief for a moment that should have bordered on the epic?
Now I'm not going to gripe about every questionable CG detail, but the scene at the gates of Morador, where Aragon and company ride out to challenge the Orc army, was just too sloppy. The overlay of the actors on the CG background is like something out of a 70s or 80s sci-fi -- glowing edges and all. The effect is probably one of the simplest to produce correctly and yet it's probably the most amateurish execution of one in the entire film.
Comment by Ryan at 09:37, 29 Dec, 2003 #
Why does everyone compare lord of the rings to The Godfather, their completely different films.Godfather is completely about character development, lotr is fantasy in a believable world. as triologies goes lotr wins because Godfather 3 let down the triology.Also lotr had far more character to build on and not enough time to do it. I'm glad Peter Jackson did the best he could to an unfilmable film. Its not the book but it is the film and the best since the Godfather, you can't knock this one.
Comment by The Train at 01:25, 26 Jan, 2004 #
The Train: You question the comparison, and then proceed to compare them yourself?
Comment by Tomas at 08:22, 26 Jan, 2004 #
In all comments I just read why does no one comment on the exclusion of the burning of the shire, something that Mr Jackson has decided to exclude from his movie. This is one of most important parts of the books, something that the whole story indirectly points to. The hobbits return to the shire to find it up the creek without the proverbial paddle. However after their experiences and adventures in the world outside the shire they are then able to sort out the problems on their own without any help from outside. This shows how the hobbits characters have changed/grown and no longer need to rely wizards and heros. Apart from that great movie!
Comment by Andrew at 12:52, 24 May, 2004 #
You may find it interesting to check out the sites about for that | for that | http://www.vivlart.com/ | this | this | http://www.getstarted24x7.net/ | where | where | http://www.online-scores24x7.com/ | for that | for that | http://www.online-top-deals.com/ | home | home | http://www.worldwide-50.com/ | home of | home of | http://www.worldwide-em.com/ | here | here | http://www.online-consultation24x7.com/ | that site | that site | http://www.nancyflowerswilson.com/ | every link | every link | http://www.langsrestaurant.com/ | each site | each site | http://www.phrensy.org/ | go there | go there | http://www.uk-virtual-office-solutions.com/ | every link | every link | http://www.bestbuys-win.com/ | site | site | http://www.pasuquinio.com/ | ...
Comment by this link at 19:00, 16 Oct, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.