A Girl With a Sword

here at the end of all things

I didn’t feel that Return of the King was so much a letdown as a major personal disaster. Well, not really, but I don’t understand why so many say this is the best of the three movies. I really don’t think this movie shows Jackson’s true potential. And I don’t get all of this Tolkien’s vision and Jackson’s vision talk. I didn’t think Jackson was so much giving us his own version as a bad interpretation of Tolkien’s version. I was willing to give the “Jackson’s vision” excuse to anything in the first movie, but this movie seemed to be taking far too many liberties with original key elements to actually be good form. I think that anyone who was angry about the changes made in The Two Towers should have been just as angry about the changes made in Return of the King. Like Arwen. I couldn’t believe Jackson decided to bring her back more. I thought, oh, that’s over, she’ll just come in at the end and it’ll be all cool and happy and right. But I was forgetting that Jackson had gone too far in the last movie and he had to bring her back from the path to the Grey Havens and all. And that scene with Frodo getting mad at Sam over the lembas and then the one about Elrond coming to the camp and telling Aragorn to go through the Paths of the Dead and completely changing the motives. It was supposed to be destiny and Aragorn was supposed to know. It’s like Jackson didn’t want Aragorn to look like a king. It was all crap and it made me sad. I had to edit it out in my head.

What really bothered me was the cuts. It started out alright, but the further the movie went the more ridiculous it got. Cut to five seconds of Faramir and Denethor then cut to five seconds of Rohan then cut to five seconds of orcs, cut cut cut. I just wanted to finish something. The worst part of the cuts, though, was when Eowyn had her big scene with the Witch King and it was completely mangled by cuts. Jackson had to bring Aragorn back in the middle of the scene. He couldn’t just finish it and then go to Aragorn. And it didn’t cut to Aragorn just once, I think it was about five times.

Now I will talk about things I liked.

I liked the eighties sparkles when they were reforging the sword. I was waiting for the disco music to start. Sorry, too many eighties fantasy movies for me. Oh, and I also liked when Sam told Frodo, “Now we need to find you some clothes, you can’t go through Mordor showing the moon to everyone” . . . oh wait, he didn’t really say that, but wouldn’t it have been fun, a little hobbit innuendo to make everyone happy? There were some great singing parts with Merry and Pippen, and I loved the way they showed Pippin’s devotion to Gondor. I loved the Rohan parts. I think the movies really brought Rohan to life. Theoden has a magnificent kingly presence. My favorite part in the whole movie was the lighting of the signals. That was one of the most beautiful and moving montages (I hope I’m using that word correctly, I usually refrain from technical film talk) I have ever seen.

On the whole, I didn’t really like the movie, but I think it was mainly the editing that bothered me and perhaps with more viewings I could get over that. I also thought the Frodo and Sam scenes just dragged and none of the dialogue in this movie really struck me as worth remembering, except I was happy they put in, “I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.” There were glorious moments.