With the
recent release of The
Hobbit, Peter Jackson has been accused of diluting his legacy. The prequel
to his famed Lord of the Rings trilogy has been accused of dumbing down the
source material and, even worse, attempting to cash in on JRR Tolkien’s revered
writing. Sadly, those accusations hold some water – so what better time to
remind ourselves of the power and majesty of The Return of the King.
While The
Fellowship of the Ring set the scene wonderfully, The
Two Towers felt like filler before the main event – the climactic
conclusion to the epic tale of good versus evil. For the uninitiated, the story
sees a group of hobbits, humans, dwarves, elves and wizards set out to destroy
the ‘one ring’ – a piece of jewellery cast from pure evil. Should they fail in
their mission, Middle Earth will be overcome by the dark lord Sauron’s armies
of darkness and the age of man will come to an end. Serious stuff.
And The
Return of the King is by far the most serious of the trilogy. Aside from
occasional quips from Gimli the dwarf, this is a much darker, scarier film in
which Peter Jackson’s history in the horror genre comes to the fore. There are
some grotesque creatures on display, blood and slime spilled, wounds inflicted
and the deaths of key characters. Mental illness features, as does the
attempted burning alive of a wounded man – this is a Lord of the Rings film for
adults.
That The
Return of the King is not a flawless film is not really Jackson’s fault. He has
remained doggedly faithful to the source, with only the cutting of Saruman’s
scenes (restored in the director’s cut) and the scouring of The Shire missing.
Sadly, this means that at some points the action plods a little – notably
whenever Frodo and Sam are featured on the road to Mordor. Even when reading
the books (many years ago) these chapters dragged somewhat in the midst of the
action packed battles between men and orcs.
It’s those
battles where the film really shines. Huge fights occur regularly, with Sauron’s
evil hordes fighting the human race in a series of set-pieces involving some of
the greatest choreography, CGI and costumes ever seen. With castle sieges,
trolls, undead armies, cavalry charges and an impressively aggressive Gandalf
involved, these scenes were always likely to hold the interest, but it’s the
human drama neatly interwoven into the action which marks these fights out as
something truly special: Aragorn’s rousing speech, Arwen and Theoden’s tender
reunion, Merry and Pippin’s beguiling bromance.
Of course,
the film goes on far too long and features at least three separate endings
where one would suffice, but these are merely an accurate reflection of Tolkien’s
sprawling narrative rather than any kind of self indulgence on Jackson’s part.
And why would anyone want to hurry away from the magic of Middle Earth anyway?
Despite its
over-earnestness and occasional impenetrability, Tolkien’s text
is a classic example of traditional storytelling in which he created an entire
world of magic, adventure and originality: a world which would have been
impossible to recreate outside our imaginations - were it not for Peter Jackson’s
vision and genius. And for that, we might even forgive him for The Hobbit.
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