The official thread for Lord Of The Rings - The Return Of The King [LOTR ROTK TROTK ROK] (NOW CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Good Points:
1) Best battle scenes EVAH! ("I see your rock throwing catapults, and we'll raise you a trebuchet that can hurl a Winnebago!")
2) Oliphants and Dragonriders and Shelob, Oh My!
3) Set design is still excellent.
4) Same with costume and prop design.
5) Not as tear-jerkingly hammy as the first movie. It's all 3 1/2 hours of ass-kicking.

Bad Points:
1) No Christopher Lee at all.
2) Maudlin, overlong denouvement.

Let me avow up-front that I share the more recent, upstart belief in universities, democratic accountability, science and human improvability -- one that questions the fated persistence of "eternal" stupidities.

SHOCKAH!!!!!!!!

Also what's the deal with sleeping right on the edge of the cliff?

And I was really impatient with how drawn out the ending was. Some of that stuff should have been saved for the extended version.

Chronicles of Narnia being made into a film, not directed by Jackson, but being worked on by his Weta Workshop.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guesses as to Extended DVD inclusions:

1. The long slog through Mordor. Surely Sam and Frodo don't just discard that orc armour so quickly. I hope there's a section detailing their unwilling march with a troop of orcs as suspected deserters.

2. After Mordor falls, and the dying/wounded are gathered within the walls of Minas Tirith, I am hoping there will be a lengthy section in which those who require healing bond enough for Faramir and Eowyn to "connect".

3. Which will require a slower build up to Aragorn's coronation. In this theatrical version, his crowning seems almost perfunctory.

But as an overall observation, I don't think I've encountered a film with so many waves of emotional payoff breaking so regularly and so relentlessly during the last (what? 30? 40 minutes?) portion. I missed so much as I was trying to deal with the tear leakage and throat lumpage without looking like a complete dork (I don't do public crying too well). I mean, fuck. I now need to see this again, of course.

Quick summary after first impression.

Good Stuff:

Oliphaunts

Continuing Frodo/Sam/Gollum stuff handled fantastically, even up to Gollum's look as he fell into the lava.

Eowyn, Theoden and Merry vs Witch King.

Shelob was genuinely creepy and frightening.

Shagrat!

Staging of battles felt real, and as Andrew pointed out above, the scale was just right.

Bad Stuff:

The Arwen stuff was terribly integrated with anything else, and was at totally the wrong time to be a handy toilet break.

Minas Tirith's battle wasn't siegey enough. Over too quickly, not enough boiling tension.

Denethor is a nutter from the word go. Shaving off the two minutes or so required for a bit of palantir action to explain his otherwise barmy seeming actions was the second most false economy of the film

Too many endings. Missing out the scouring of the Shire, whilst a good idea in itself resulted in too many natural finishes piling up against each other.

Really, really, WTF, I can't believe you did it like that potentially great bit of cinema screwed up:

Corsair ships coming up from Pelargir. Why no sighting from Minas Tirith 'NOW we're fucked' turning to hurrah hurrah as banner of Gondor unfurled in lead ship?

The little speech from Gandalf to Pippin during the lull in the battle "turn to silvered glass ... a swift sunrise" sounded familiar because it's the description of what happens at the end of Frodo's last voyage over the sea.

Lyra still OTM about Pippin's song/Denethor's meal/Faramir's charge.

I do worry that because we got away lightly with the elves in the theatrical version that they're gonna be all over the extended version. Arwen's part was a rubbidge bit of shoehorning.

I really liked MORGUL VALE, especially the creepy green lighting and the hem hem ISSUING OF THE HORDES. Also the whacking grebt bit of the corruption of Gollum at the start = v creepy! Sad to see no mention of the yellow face.

What Ricardo said about the Corsairs AND Denethor but they might might be able to recover this in the extended.

Boo to elves! Also I was retroactively annoyed at the Elves fighting at Helms Deep in TTT. If they fought then then why didn't they come and fight again in Gondor AND why didn't anybody notice, esp the fighters from Rohan! It would have made much more sense if they hadn't fought AT ALL grr argh.

Who else thought Frodo was looking like Marilyn Manson after he got all webbed up?

1. There's a cut-out plot where Eowyn meets Faramir as he's recovering in the Houses of Healing (=the hospital) and they fall for each other. Which they sort of hint at in the film (what with the clearly erotically-charged standing next to each other that they're doing at the end).

A smart friend of mine points out that because they don't resolve Saruman one way or the other, he is basically the only serious power left in Middle-Earth at the end of the film.

x-post Wormtongue is the black-haired wizard that was kinda "handling" Theodren pre-Gandalf-freeing-his-mind.

ROSIE COTTON = GEORGE DAWES!

well Jackson would deny that vehemently - and is it right to just read sexuality into these things. can't two men (or in this case hobbits, who are not men thus different) just say they love each other and be charmed by each other's astonishing displays of courage, honour, loyalty, trust and generosity without it being read as some hobbo-erotic thang?