For as little as this film has to work with, plot wise, there's really no excuse for how long it clings to the screen. Really, in the grand scheme of things, what does it accomplish? A big battle scene to preserve the sacred city of Gondor, a recruitment drive in the land of the dead to facilitate the former, Frodo and Sam's arrival at Mordor and the big finale at the lava pit. Some exposition can be expected, naturally, and in a few scattered cases it does serve to enrich the extended universe, but for those four primary points to devour over four hours of screen time seems ridiculously excessive.

The wealth of character moments on display in Return of the King are generally well done, but rarely do they feel as essential as they did in previous chapters. With very little exception, the primary cast has already worked through their individual arcs before the title card, so there isn't much meat in that respect.

As with The Two Towers, the fight scenes (scattered liberally throughout) are appropriately epic and pulse-pounding, though these too push the limits in terms of what the viewing audience is willing to let slide. We're already suspending our disbelief a fair distance in regards to the fellowship's universal fighting prowess, but one particular scene with Legolas and an elephant seems more than a bit excessive. In fact, Legolas is granted an especially silly amount of battlefield respect throughout the series.

I could dwell on the negatives all day long - I haven't even touched on the stupid amount of slow motion in the farewell scenes - but at the end of the day, this really isn't a bad film... just a madly bloated one. It's thoroughly rewarding to finally conclude our journey with the residents of Middle Earth, and when the plot finally gets around to waving goodbye it's a powerful experience. I just can't help but wonder how much better a slim two-hour cut, trimming off half the body fat of the original, would play to the same material. Oh, and its status as a Best Picture winner? Clearly that was a lifetime achievement award for the trilogy at large, because The King is far and away LOTR's weakest installment.

[8.6/10] The power of friendship is a cliché. Every other movie has their hero overcoming adversity, and probably the bad guy, through the bonds they’ve forged with their crew of allies and confidantes. It’s a good message; it just becomes tiresome after a while. But *The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King* makes that trite sentiment feel legitimate and moving again. It is a story about the power of friendship, whose crux centers less on the defeat of the great evil, or the grand triumph in battle, than on the hardship-tested love between two hobbits who literally and figuratively support one another when things seem their bleakest.

I mean “love” in every sense. The film takes care to show that, no, despite how many times Samwise gazes longingly into Frodo’s eyes, he likes girls, so don’t you dare get the wrong idea, mainstream film audiences! But however much the movie cares to sweep it under the rug, there is genuine affection between Frodo and Sam, one that makes Sam’s dismissal heartbreaking, his return stirring, and their mutual farewell poignant but blissful in its own way. Yes, by the end of the film, the big scary eye is extinguished, and the pockmarked black armies are sent into the rubble of the earth. But more importantly, the fellowship between these two unlikely heroes withstands the worst that Middle Earth could throw at them, and then some.

And yet despite that small scale story (albeit with the biggest of backdrops) *Return of the King* practically defines cinematic epicness. As in the first two movies of the trilogy, even when the story starts to wobble, the sheer aesthetic glory of each frame keeps the viewer engrossed in the proceedings. Sauron’s black army of the monstrous and deformed strikes fear into the heart of the Fellowship and the audience. The white alabaster castles jutting into the sky, and ash-flaked canyons where our heroes crawl and cower lend themselves to the elemental sense of the struggle. And the golden hues of Frodo’s recovery and departure convey the tone of relief and catharsis and joy after so much ventured and nearly lost.

Of course, much of the skill in special effects and production design goes toward the grand spectacle that is the film’s raging battle. Director Peter Jackson achieves a sense of scale in the skirmish nearly unmatched by any other committed to screen. The lumbering trolls who smash and ready and fall, the opposing aerial assaults of flying rocks and zipping arrows, the close quarters combat of panicked knights and blood-thirsty monsters, and the skyward clashes between scaly reptiles and winged birds all keep the heart racing and the blood pumping through the showpiece battle of the entire trilogy.

At the same time, Jackson and company take care not to let the fight descend into spectacle alone. If nothing else, *Return* maintains a good flow of battle, with each side gaining the upper hand and seeing it slip away in turn. The confrontation comes with three separate “the cavalry has arrived” moments -- Theoden and the warriors of Rohan, Aragorn and the army of the dead, and the aforementioned giant eagles -- and yet each of them is rousing in its own way. And the personal stakes of Gandalf and Pippin rescuing Faramir from his deranged father, and Eowyn defending her father from the Witch King, help ground the massive battle in something more individual amid the tumult and triumphs.

Of course, much of that success comes down to the performers. There are a number of action movie one-liners, grandiose statements about hope and survival, dying words and purple prose ruminations on what’s at stake in *Return*. And yet, when they’re delivered amid the swell of Howard Shore’s incredible score, spoken with the gravitas and sincerity delivered by the cast’s stellar array of players, and especially, imbued with that little extra twinkle in the eye that only Ian McKellan can provide, they pierce your (read: my) cynical core nonetheless.

The film needs that glue to hold it together given how spread apart and jumbled up much of its plot and declaration is. Despite having made it past the character introductions, and streamlined the various story threads into what is, more or less, one final, all-encompassing conflict, *Return* still finds itself jumping from place to place, dropping lore like a never-before-mentioned horde of undead warriors out of nowhere, and slipping in exposition wherever it can to try to tie things up where needed. With that, Aragorn’s ascendancy to the monarchy feels perfunctory, a trope-mandated inevitability that lacks the same depth of feeling or character as the reciprocal journey to Mt. Doom.

Despite that, the morality play and test of friendship that completes the journey through Mordor more than makes up for it. While the reunion of Sam and Frodo seems as inevitable as Aragorn reclaiming the throne, there’s more weight to it, both because of the wounded performances that Sean Astin and Elijah Wood deliver, but also because of the sense that Frodo is being corrupted here, torn away from the thing that has kept him stable and centered and able to persevere in this immense struggle for so long. *Return* capitalizes on the dramatic irony of the audience knowing Gollum’s plans while Frodo doesn't, to make the dissolution of their pairing one of tragedy.

But it’s the difference between Frodo and Gollum that ends up making the difference, for them and for the whole of Middle Earth. The film opens with Smeagol succumbing to the influence of the ring, giving Andy Serkis a chance to show his chops without mocap, but also showing what’s at stake, how even the strongest of friendships can fall to the wayside under the dark power of this bewitched article.

It ends, however, with an affirmation of the friendship that withstood. The most stirring scene in *Return of the King* is not Sauron’s tower crumbling to the ground, or the ring sinking into magma, or the victory of the villainous hordes. It’s Sam carrying his exhausted, depleted friend on his back to the point of no return. It leads to the same sort of irony, that ultimately Frodo does succumb to the ring’s wiles, but that Gollum’s pitiful avarice ends his burden (and dooms the poor, wretched creature in the process), while Sam has taken him to where he needs to be. It is that bond that led them here and that bond that saved the world.

The final cinematic chapter in *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy is much like its predecessors. It aims high, wows its audience with daring spectacle, and soothes them with heartfelt performances. It also stumbles through the thicket of lore and plot points, races to keep the audience up to speed with the tangled events, and can’t quite figure out when and where to wrap things up.

But *Return of the King* elevates itself above the first two chapters through that old cliché, made new and vital once more. Of all things, this fantasy epic -- steeped in the vanquishing of evil and the farewell too old magic and the dawning dominion of men -- turns out to be a love story. Read that love however you want, but it is the thing that breaks the power of the one ring, and cements this film as an indelible, moving piece of pop cultural history.

An outstanding end to the trilogy.

I expected a lot from 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' so I am delighted to see it produce on so many levels. I, funnily enough, wouldn't actually say it's necessarily the most perfect execution - what with the plot coincidences and extreme character armour. But that doesn't matter one jot whatsoever, as the story wraps up in arguably the best way - at least to watch - possible. It has so much heart and feeling to it.

The story involving the characters of Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkis remained the most interesting to me, I was very satisfied with how it concluded in regards to them. I also enjoyed the bits we got of Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen & Co. All that added to the beautiful look and creation of the film, with the world coming alive splendidly.

If I were to nit-pick further, I would say the run time is slightly too long. The pacing is absolutely fine, very good in fact, but I coulda done without a few of the many end scenes - a lot of which are necessary and welcome, but a couple could've been left out to allow the viewer to imagine how the world continued. That's just how I feel mind, I'm sure I'm one of only a few that think that way.

Back onto the positives: how about those battle sequences? Astonishingly good. A sensational trilogy, no question about it. I look forward to seeing 'The Hobbit' films.

A fitting end to a classic trilogy.
Frodo, Samwise, and Gollum journey through a Hell on what is called "Middle Earth", while Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas go to war. King Theoden must decide whether to help those who would not help him. Merry wants to war, but is too small. Pippin finds himself getting in more and more mischief.
Lots of subplots. Never a dull second. Masterfully dierected.
What more can be said? Truly mesmerizing every step of the way, and a movie with maybe four endings that just lead into each other, and we still can't get enough.

And so all good things come to an end. For three years in a row, Peter Jackson has banished our winter blues with the individual instalments of his Tolkien trilogy, effectively shifting the focus of our cinematic excitement from the summer months to the end of the year. But now that his epic has been unveiled in its entirety, what will be the lasting effects of his achievement?

Well, grand-scale fantasy filmmaking is back on the menu, laying down the gauntlet to George Lucas and Star Wars Episode III. Jackson has also proved that notions of risk and ambition needn't be confined to the low-budget, indie end of the spectrum; nor does California have an exclusive stranglehold on groundbreaking special effects.

And then there's the DVD factor. Just as The Lord Of The Rings was upping the stakes in theatres, so too was its DVD release pattern defining what can (and should) be done on disc for major movies.

In particular, the four-disc extended editions seem to have affected the director's thinking as to what he can get away with in his theatrical final cut. Hence the public grumbles from Christopher Lee about the non-appearance of Saruman in this final instalment. While it might have been fair to grant Lee a curtain call, Jackson quite rightly realises that it is Sauron, not Saruman, whose fiery eye encompasses all the narrative strands of the climax.

The Return Of The King marks the first time in the series when Jackson's roots as a horror filmmaker creep through. As the orcs catapult severed Gondorian heads beyond the walls of Minas Tirith, flesh-rotted ghosts draw swords alongside Aragorn and giant spider Shelob stalks Frodo through dark, web-shrouded tunnels, the film pushes the boundaries of its 12A certificate.

And so it should, because the look and tone must necessarily grow darker as the Hobbits near Mount Doom and Mordor's evil hand grips Middle-earth ever tighter.

Character nuances have been crafted over an unprecedented ten hours-plus of cinematic storytelling: from Strider lurking in the shadowy corner to Aragorn rallying the troops; from Merry and Pippin as bumbling fools to stout-hearted, pint-sized warriors. Only Legolas and Gimli seem to have regressed (in screen time at least) to set-piece archer and comedy sidekick respectively. At least Andy Serkis is rewarded for his Gollum voice work with an early flashback that gets his face on screen, as well as warning us that, under the ring's power, Smeagol can be as murderous as Gollum.

Jackson has kept the momentum of the series rolling on and on though the traditionally 'difficult' middle part and 'weak' finale, delivering a climax to the story that's neater and more affecting than what Tolkien managed on the printed page. Some viewers might feel that the director sprinkles some cheese on his extended coda, adding at least one false ending too many (even if he does ignore the book's Scouring of The Shire).

But those who have walked beside these heroes every step of the way on such a long journey deserve the emotional pay-off as well as the action peaks, and they will be genuinely touched as the final credits roll. Yes, the Ring is dead. Long live King Kong.


Verdict - The resounding climax to a landmark in cinema history. But the King has now returned, the story is over and the ships are leaving Middle-earth. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvish has left the building.

5/5

- Alan Morrison, Empire Magazine