With every rewatch, my thoughts on Return of the King grow a little more complex. On one hand, this is most thrilling film in the trilogy. It pays off the emotional and action beats of the previous two films with absolute perfection. The franchise’s cinematic legacy couldn’t exist without the awe-inspiring grandeur of Return of the King. This film won 11 Oscars, and it deserved every single one of them.
And yet, King also offers the most nits to pick. By nailing the first two films, director Peter Jackson has spoiled us rotten. Any flaw in Return of the King is doomed to stick out. Unfortunately, as many reviews have noted, this third installment has a near-fatal storytelling misstep.
We’ll double back to the in a minute. First, let’s dwell on the bounty of good that Jackson and company have given us. Most of King rolls with the same thunder that rumbled through The Two Towers. Jackson (with usual co-writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens) hurtle the story from one jaw-dropping set piece to the next. It’s a satisfying buffet for Tolkien enthusiasts and noobs alike.
Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) have reached the final miles of their marathon trek to Mount Doom. Gollum– their scrawny, treacherous guide–plans to double-cross them at Shelob’s lair. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) reconvene with Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) at the rubble of Isengard. The young hobbits, working with Treebeard (voice of Rhys-Davies) and the vengeful ents have broken the Uruk armies of Saruman and pinned the wizard in his own tower.
Things look rosy for our heroes before they stumble on some unsettling news: Sauron is emptying his forces from Mount Doom to crush the race of Men once and for all. We learn that he is about to lay siege to Minas Tirith, capital city for the Kingdom of Gondor. With that news, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and his allies race to fortify the White City’s defenses before the Orcish hordes arrive.
The resulting buildup and battle occupy the film’s stirring second act. Here, Jackson’s ability to deliver big, dramatic bursts of action comes to its peak. The lighting of the beacons is one the most rousing moments of the trilogy, followed by the mammoth Battle of Pelennor Fields. It’s a nerd’s delight, as we get Ringwraiths on flying mounts, massive catapults, and armored war trolls. Jackson’s been saving up for this moment, and it doesn’t disappoint.
Even better, the entire cast rises to the moment, resulting in all the emotional payoffs. Astin is Oscar-worthy as Samwise, the redoubtable best buddy who falls prey to Gollum’s withering evil. As Gollum, Serkis fully commits to his character’s foul machinations, finally becoming the embodiment of embittered treachery. Billy Boyd fleshes out the otherwise dimwitted Pip, giving him pangs of melancholia and flashes of all-out heroism. It’s one of the most subtle and satisfying character arcs in the entire trilogy. John Noble plays Denethor, Steward of Gondor, as a cruel, pitiful individual, incapable of defending his kingdom. This gives a poignant and tragic dimension to Faramir (David Wenham), who is crestfallen at his father’s indifference.
All this dramatic heft serves as preamble to the showdown at Mount Doom. When it comes, Jackson delivers the goods with an ending that’s both intimate and epic, as two kindly hobbits are tasked with saving the world from the brink. The final action of this movie is an onslaught of sound and fury, and it’s as exciting as any movie every made. If Jackson could’ve sustained this magnificence to the film’s end, I could argue Return of the King as perhaps the peak of all cinema.
Alas, nope. King ends up as something less. Still great, mind you–but some of its brilliance begins to dissipate around the three-hour mark. I know, I know. Every review brings up Jackson’s interminable epilogue, which rambles for nearly thirty unforgivable minutes. (The Extended Edition offers even more slog for the money.) And purists will note that Tolkien’s behemoth features even more endings.
But for all his achievements here, for all his obvious brilliance, Jackson commits two key sins. First, he breaks the top rule for screenwriters adapting novels to screen: Don’t just re-write the book. Jackson and his team spend three movies doing a bang-up job of filtering and straightening Tolkien’s meandering narrative into a fully coherent cinematic landscape. It’s a minor miracle, but it all goes to hell in this epilogue. Jackson gives us way too much dialogue, too many lingering scenes, and just…too much of everything. If anything, he’s like an awkward man who doesn’t know when to stop hugging you.
Jackson’s second sin: It’s a tenet of filmmaking that if you’re going to have storytelling flaws, then it’s better to have them in the beginning or middle. You’ve got to stick the landing. The theatrical cut blathers for about ten minutes too long. The Extended Edition stretches that to a bladder-taxing 251 minutes. Tolkien purists will undoubtedly gobble every morsel on Jackson’s platter, but from a cinematic standpoint–which is how I must come at these movies–this protracted endings hobble the entire trilogy’s momentum.
With all that said, let me be clear: That’s not a killer flaw. (In most movies, it surely would be.) Return of the King is still a worthy, eye-popping finish to one of the great movie trilogies. Peter Jackson took a story they said could never be filmed and propelled it to box office gold and a raft of awards. Film historians will gush about this series as long as movies are made. These three films range from glorious perfection to merely adequate genius. Everyone should experience Lord of the Rings at least once, and on the biggest screen possible.
201 min. PG-13. MAX.
