Return of the King

I went to see this epic conclusion to the Lord of the Rings trilogy yesterday (so did Rich). Here are some random thoughts, in no particular order, about the movie (scroll down to avoid spoilers)

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1) Excellent, excellent, excellent film. I re-immersed myself in Middle-earth this week, re-watching "Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Two Towers" on DVD to get back in the mood. "Fellowship" was 2:36 long, "Towers" was about 2:50, and "King" was about 3:15. If you go, prepare to stay awhile....

2) Some Ring-o-philes may disagree with me, and it's been years since I read the trilogy, but I think the story was more about Merry, Pippin and especially Sam Gamgee than it was about Frodo. True, Frodo was the ring-bearer, and the one who had the courage to eventually resist the ring and finish his task but that was his character more or less through the whole trilogy. If you see the changes in the other hobbits from Bilbo's party in "Fellowship" through the end of "King" you'll see three startling transformations from children to men.

3) I wonder if the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien had any problems with "The Lord of the Rings", by Frodo Baggins at the end of the movie? It made sense, but it was just odd seeing a real body of literature attributed to someone else - fiction or not.

4) Ok, just end the movie...ok? Oh wait another scene...

5) The Riders of Rohan must've watched "The Empire Strikes Back" before going into battle against those giant elephant-things. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, "Set harpoons and tow cables - go for the legs!!"

6) Except for some good battle sequences, I thought Legolas and especially Gimli were wasted in this flim. The minor characters like Faramir, his father Denethor the Steward of Rohan, Eowyn, and others really had larger and more personal roles to play. Gimli was rather one note, especially which is kind of a shame. Again, you can't really go heavily against the source material and I don't remember enough about him in the novel to know if more could've been given for him to do.

7) Um, Saruman? Saruman? *knock knock knock* I could've sworn Saruman was in this trilogy.... Actually all his stuff got cut from the movie so we don't see Christopher Lee at all. The Scouring of the Shire (from the end of the novel) was not included at all where we read the last of Saruman and Wormtongue.

8) After Aragorn rejects Eowyn, I wanted Legolas to run up and say, "Hey....yoo hoo! Me - other big hero guy over here - unattached and everything!! Hey!!"

9) Gandalf, what's the point of sleeping with your eyes open if you're not on guard? And Merry sure took his own sweet time trying to save Pippin from the palantir - why didn't he raise a fuss right away for Gandalf?

10) The scene on the bridge in the Cracks of Doom played out almost exactly like it did in my head (except for the part with Gollum dancing in "mid-air" fighting the invisible Frodo. That actually looked a bit silly right at the major climax of the movie...

11) Amazing how all the random destruction that happens to the soldiers (rocks falling on them, flaming debris raining down, elephant's tusks swinging - none of those events ever happen anywhere near the main characters. One big rocks falls and crushes 100 soldiers in its path and Aragorn barely notices it. I did like the Orc Commander's narrow escape from the flying boulder - one little sidestip, and he spits on it :)

That's all for now - maybe more random thoughts later.