#18: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Release Date: December 17th, 2003
Format: Streaming (Max)
Written by: Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh
Directed by: Peter Jackson
3.5 Stars
There is plenty of nitpicking I could do with these individual Lord of the Rings movies. You have to understand that these are movies by nerds, for nerds. Hence, they come with a few issues.
First, it’s a complete bro-fest. Male-bonding is a dominant theme, possibly the dominant theme, of the whole arc. Females are largely absent from this 8-hour movie. Think about that for a sec. There are, I think, three minor female characters in an 8-hour movie. That’s incredible. Why so few women? Nerds don’t know how to write women. The women that do appear in the series are nerd wet dreams: Beautiful, nurturing, understanding, patiently waiting for their little hero to triumphantly return. A girlfriend and mother wrapped into one.
Secondly, magic and magical skills are the antidote to brute force. This is how nerds defeat, at least in theory, their enemies. The orcs in LotR are stand-ins for mean high school dickheads; the Uruk-hai are clearly mindless, jock football players. Nerds are hobbits who want to fantasize that they are Aragorn, or at the very least Legolas. In fantasy it works, but if we’re in Europe during the Roman Empire or Greenland circa 900 A.D., the strong win and the weak lose 100% of the time.
And my third major critique is the emotional ham-fistedness of the dialogue. Jesus Christ, at times it can be tough to deal with. The movies succeed despite the dialogue, not because of it, and some of the actors are better with it than others (I’m not sure the film’s main actor, Elijah Wood, is the best, unfortunately). Nerds are detail-oriented in regards to world-building and battles and weapons and narrative hero arcs, but human moments and human connection? Not a nerd strength.
Now that I’m done shitting on these movies, I will say The Lord of the Rings is the best mainstream, big budget trilogy of all-time. God damn if I didn’t get teary-eyed at the end of Return of the King. And this is I think the fourth time that I’ve watched the series. That’s over 30 hours of Lord of the Rings.
The reason that I go back to it, and why I think a lot of fans go back to it, is that it really is a journey. We, the audience, are part of the Fellowship.
The movie achieves something that, say, Star Wars never could, in that there is a singular narrative force driving the characters at the same time it is driving us. The films were shot at the same time, using the same source material, and overseen by a talented and driven filmmaker with a singular vision. It’s magical. Well done nerds, well done.
