{"id":515,"date":"2003-12-25T09:10:26","date_gmt":"2003-12-25T14:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/uncategorized\/lotr-the-return-of-the-king"},"modified":"2003-12-25T09:10:26","modified_gmt":"2003-12-25T14:10:26","slug":"lotr-return-of-the-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/reviews\/movie\/lotr-return-of-the-king\/","title":{"rendered":"LOTR: The Return of The King"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI admire the The Return of the King<\/a> for its technical execution and artistic achievement. There’s no denying that it’s a very well done movie. Grand and epic it is, but the epic scale leaves me cold.\n<\/p>\n

\nPeter Jackson has done the best he can with the material, I suppose. In The Fellowship of the Ring<\/i> I was impressed with his use of extreme closeups to balance the majestic landscapes, to keep us focused on the individual. Epic and personal stories were woven together, involving the audience in the struggles of the fellowship and providing an urgency, an immediacy to the action. But in The Return of the King<\/i>, as Gandalf, says “The board is set; the players are in motion.” And each player falls into place according to destiny. The inevitability dulls any emotion. All the character development occurred in the first two movies, and this last one maintains the mood of a grand finale. As it goes on for 200 minutes, it rather begs the curtain to fall.\n<\/p>\n

\nEven evil lacks the focused presence afforded in a character like Darth Vader. The doom, gloom and dread provide that pervasive Cold War it’s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hopelessness, but it isn’t enough to rally the audience to heroic battle. Evil attacks as mindlessly as machines, relentless and soulless, without personality. And without villains, without the Adolf Hitlers, Osama bin Ladens, and Saddam Husseins, how can we have heroes? The heroic actions of the individual muffled by the general chaos and confusion of great battles. Regardless of the visual cleverness of the effects, I was not part of the action any more than any single character seemed a part of the action. Watching these great battles was like watching a very good video game playing itself. There is no one to care for and our love is wasted, spent on shadows and dreams.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe only characters facing a true struggle of self-determination are Sam Gamgee and Gollum. Sam is there for a personal, not epic, reason: the loyalty to his friend, Frodo. When his loyalty is doubted, and his friend casts him aside, then Sam’s faith in himself and all he’s believed and fought for is tested. Gollum, is the richest character of all, providing far more depth and conflict of emotion than any of the human actors in the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s a guy thing.<\/p>\n

Bottom Line. Inevitable. (And not in a good way.)<\/p>\n
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