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

Still great, of course, still thinking about it, already waiting a bit impatiently to seeing it with my family on the 25th. Watching all three movies in a row was instructive because it actually showed to me how each movie was different for all that it was telling a part of a larger story. In part this was because of the need to be able to give each section a proper general sense of a smaller story and ending, I think, but there were other differences and choices as well -- a lot of it comes down to Howard Shore's music, I think. It may seem strange, but he found some extremely sharp themes and worked them very, very well, to astonishing effect.

My bets for the extended edition, besides the known Saruman, Mouth of Sauron and Houses of Healing sequences, include the Gandalf/Witchking confrontation (shown in the preview), quite possibly Denethor's palantir, an extended section showing the time spent for Frodo/Sam to get to Mount Doom across Mordor matching Aragorn's march to the Black Gate as taking some days for both of them.

Some of the technical points still leave me so amazed...I'm thinking in particular of the part where you can see Faramir and his men about to start their doomed attack on Osgiliath. Behind the line of horsemen in the distance, you can see Minas Tirith looming up, shimmering in the heat of the day. It's a subtle but crucial touch. Then there's the sudden second of silence before Minas Morgul sends out the streaming signal of pale light, or how the flames in Mt. Doom suddenly pulls away to reveal Frodo standing over the abyss.

Having seen all the films now, I think about how in my head I always shoot a movie of LOTR every time I read it, much like I do with any fictional narrative I read. I think of angles, lighting, sometimes even music. Peter Jackson and crew made something with visions I never thought of and approaches I couldn't have conceived because I was always filming an unedited version in head -- it was worth every edit, reduction or simplification, every one.

Favourite moments include: the beacons being lit (but I didn't wholly understand that) / Gandalf knocking down Denethor and organizing the defence of Minas Tirith / the Rohirrim forming their lines and readying to attack the orcs, and indeed doing so / the subsequent scene with dismaying elephants attacking the heroic Rohirrim / the fightback vs the elephants / Aragorn and co getting off their boat, esp. the surprise factor cos we were meant to think they were pirates; includes Legolas on the elephant and his encounter with Gimli when he gets down / Eowyn fighting the ringwraith.

(I saw the first two films for the first time on Saturday.. does this make me uncool?)

Wasn't it just to summon assistance from the other armies?

I was pleased that we didn't get many elves especially because MAKING THEM GO TO ROHAN MADE NO SENSE and if they came to GONDOR as well that would just be silly but it's also silly they don't arhgrhrhrh WHY DID YOU DO IT JACKSON WHY WHY WHYY?

Except for Denethor. Have seen twice now and he's just WRONGWRONGWRONG, just this complete ass, and the alteration adds nothing. Even the effective-nevertheless doomed sortie/Pippin sings scene gets ruined; the steward and lord of Gondor, "in whom the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true," who "looked more a mighty wizard" than Gandalf, who retook Osgiliath in the first place WOULD NOT DROOL GOO ALL OVER HIS CHIN!!! He WOULD NOT GET SLAPPED AROUND, EVEN BY GANDALF!!!

And his coat is gay. And his running 200 yards while on fire is fucking supergay too. (I don't see how they're going to incorporate the palantir into the pyre scene later, either.) I don't think it's an accident that this, the grossest case of rewriting in Jackson's trilogy, is also the most problematic (I think it beats the Elf problem--am I forgetting anything else?).

My favorite latent contradiction born of cut-to-the-chase reduction so far:

Gandalf: Frodo has passed beyond my sight.
Somebody Else: Oh yeah?
Gandalf: That's right. And there are 10,000 orcs between him and Mount Doom.
Somebody Else: But I thought you said he'd passed beyond--

then again, the slow stuff was even slower

Which is why the second Shelob fight was SO EFFECTIVE when it sinks in that (even consciously knowing it from the books) that there is no one to swoop in behind Sam and save him, that the quest hinges on him defeating this giant fucking spider.

Elves? Elves are RUB!

(* especially if its a male elf wearing the gown.)

I'm going to hide behind the sofa before typing this next bit, because you're going to throw stuff at me, but I thought the beacons were a bit rubbish. It looked like they'd sat the work experience kid down at a computer and said "here, click on this, then on this mountain top and see how it makes a fire? Now do that on every other mountain top. It should only take you half an hour, then you can do this pile of photocopying". Or something. Maybe, having read all your spoilers before seeing the film, my expectations were too high.

Shelob was very scary, even more so because I knew what was coming. I gave Ally a dead arm from squeezing. And the bit that brought me closest to tears (nb. I don't cry easily) was "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry YOU". Lovely Sam. But when he got back to the Shire and was living with Rosie, I thought his garden was a bit of a mess and a disgrace to hobbitkind, especially considering its special fertilizer.

it's a thankless part,
all that suffering, gazing,
heroic sadness

but I don't buy him
in this one, his long soul-takes
showed no soul AT ALL

I also think Bob Hoskins should have been in it somehow.

Yeah, well, you're a punk. As is everyone who criticizes. (I kid, of course.)

Denethor's added scene in The Two Towers helps flesh out his collapse in ROTK more but I think it will be down to the extended version to really get it all in perspective, as will be the case with a number of other sequences.

In a larger sense, the problem Jackson and company had (but not a problem they were unaware of, I think) is that anything changed with later impact to the story had to be addressed somehow and that resulted in a forced solution at point -- combined with the editing crunch of the theatrical version, things had to give here and there. I don't think it broke the story at all, though -- I say this thanks to the viewing evidence of my dad and my sister, both of whom are emphatically not Tolkien fans or readers and who have only seen the previous films one time each on the previous Christmases. They both enjoyed ROTK as it stood.

(Now seen it four times myself. Hee hee hee. At least once more in the theaters for me...and probably more. Meanwhile, Jesus H., that's a lot of cash made. They're already almost at half a billion worldwide.)

the comical aspect of the opening riverfolk scene was okay, but andy serkis' voice in the opening as smeagol was over the top, i wish he could've talked more "riverfolk-ish" like deagol. that voice was (as i understood) cultivated over the 600 years of exile that he spent in the lonely mountain.

i think christopher lee's gripes of being cut (part. saruman holed up in the orthanc with grima) are completely legitimate. i thought closure with saruman (at least knowing beforehand that the scouring had been scrapped) would be more crucial to the plot than at least one of the false endings.

the palantir: cheap plot device used as is, might as well just saved those scenes for the extended cut.

i thought the shots of minas tirith (and minas morgul) were muchly improved over the brief treatments we get of them in the first film.

the one-dimensional "batty" treatment of denethor (as noted above) was too simple and convenient (esp. in contrast of the treatment of Faramir in the T2T). mark s otm "gandalf's whipping boy"... a disservice to tolkien's character.

The shots of the boy (Eldarion?) seen in Arwen's vision kind of bugged me.

elrond informing aragorn of arwen's sickness when delivering anduril reforged from the shards of narsil at dunharrow: cheap plot device, unneccesary.

the last scene of eowyn and aragorn I thought showed arrogance on the part of aragorn. eowyn came to defend her people and to defy "life in a cage", "the honor of her people", etc. yet he thinks she's come along solely for him.

felicity otm wrt: the dead looking corny (stevem noted the strong similarity to pirates of the carribean). compared to the way the ringwraiths looked to frodo in the shadowworld on weathertop, i thought this was unfair treatment to the look/appearance/convenience of the dead (esp. the convenience of the black ships as well! this was a huge climax/matter of strategy in the book!!! only to be treated like an afterthought).

the pig battering ram looked kind of silly too.

after frodo gets stung by shelob, the awkward pause while he froths is a bit much (a harkening back to earlier p.jackson?). also, i thought shelob got it good from sam, the film version seemed more of a taming than a defeat.

the speed of which frodo and sam get to mount doom from this point forward:

+ the convenience of the orcs killing themselves... you'd think that the last orcs standing after several hundred have been battling would put up a little more challenge than just to be tossed aside by sam
+ the ease of their frodo/sam's entry to mordor and journey across the gorgoroth
+ the ease at which sauron is distracted at the gates of mordor once his ring was in his gaze was too easy...
+ all ofthe above took monumentally longer in the book (i think ned says something similar upthread).

all of mount doom (the climax of the whole trilogy!) was a real let down. i thought sean astin and elijah wood's acting was very poor, esp. in comparison to the strength of their acting in some of the earlier films. in particular the "strawberries in cream" speech sam gives at the foot of mt. doom rang esp. hollow and worthy of a product placement ad/flashforward for readi-whip or something.

the blossoming of the tree in the courtyard of minas tirith i thought would figure larger symbolically, rather than providing party confetti.

a lot of the cgi looks better in the dark scenes (gollum, the eagle(s), etc.) the blue-screening i don't think will age well as technology improves, it already looks a little dated and obvious in certain scenes.

okay i'm done. i liked a lot of the cinematic cut of ROTK, but i still think the first was the best.

Uh, it was a wolf.

but tell me this doesn't look the slightest porcine:

http://www.quintessentialwebsites.com/lordoftherings/movieshots_rotk/pv_grond_circle.jpg

i'm not sure it's a weight gain with aragorn (i think more obvious is sean astin's yo-yo weight during the pick up scenes now that the directors/writers pointed them out) but rather, his wig is combed rather than scraggily and he has grown a full beard rather than sporting the scruffy stubble look which he had all through the first 2.85 films.

I suppose a red 'x' could be a pig kiss in a way. ;-)

I thought the battering ram was kind of scary, and almost cried during the strawberries-and-cream speech. Honestly.

:-) So did Jackson when they were filming it. You are in fine company.

The whole Denethor's Pyre thing was woefully anvil-handed. Even aside from that, THAT LANDING STRIP THING ON TOP OF MINAS TIRITH WAS FAR TOO LONG FOR A BURNING LUNATIC TO RUN ALONG AND JUMP OFF. It cut to a battle scene straight afterwards and I sort of expected him to hi-lariously squash an orc in the background ala the 'K' from the Kwik-E-Mart in the Simpsons.

I think Viggo Mortenson and a lot of the NZ actors forgot what their accents were supposed to sound like over the course of the three films. Mortenson was increasingly plummy-English having sounded Irish in Bree. Legolas again hardly got any lines that weren't summarising things that were already very obvious ('a DIVERSION!') - is this because Orlando Bloom can't actually act or some shit? Shame, he looked good in his big sleeved fop-gown at the end and the oliphaunt mauling was great.

The Gollum prologue was a bit dumb to start with but it was good when he got all haggard and mental. Not sure the gradual link between the SerkisHobbit and the CGI Gollum was entirely convincing though. But still, the man has gusto. And he was Martin Hannett.

Cutting out the Nazgul-Gandalf talkoff in Minas Tirith seemed a bit stupid especially when they'd already had the Witch King say he was going to fuck him up. This added to the overall impression of the Nine being total fucking pussies. They also set up that pink, porcine orc with the squashed face to be the guy everyone REALLY WANTED TO SEE GET KILLED and then didn't show him die. This is perhaps a really obtuse ploy to boost sales of the extended edition.

(Is the Mouth Of Sauron thing definitely in the extended one? In the vidyer game Aragorn just cuts him up instead of out-talking him.)

The latter.

Actually, I found in my reviewings a nice subtle touch -- the final flashback scene has protoGollum closing his eyes and then they *very* slightly CGI them so that way when reopened they are now larger and much more like Gollum's in the final state.

But still, the man has gusto. And he was Martin Hannett.

Damn straight. My sister, who saw and liked 24 Hour Party People, was very surprised when I pointed out it was the same actor!

Cutting out the Nazgul-Gandalf talkoff in Minas Tirith seemed a bit stupid especially when they'd already had the Witch King say he was going to fuck him up. This added to the overall impression of the Nine being total fucking pussies.

In the sequence as filmed, the Witchking actually defeats Gandalf by shattering his staff (this is why Gandalf is shown without his staff later on). Presumably that scene will be restored, it's too iconic not to be reincluded.

They also set up that pink, porcine orc with the squashed face to be the guy everyone REALLY WANTED TO SEE GET KILLED and then didn't show him die. This is perhaps a really obtuse ploy to boost sales of the extended edition.

I'm not so cynical...but you're correct that Gothmog (ze character's name) is obviously the 'goddamn SOMEBODY kill him bloodily!' character. I'm guessing Eomer is who offs him in the EE if that is shown.

Is the Mouth Of Sauron thing definitely in the extended one?

I'm almost positive. One of the tie-in books showed the character's helmet -- no eyeholes, only shows his mouth, which is appropriate. It's hinted in said book that Aragorn also slices him up as per the video game result.

There was a scene in the extended edition of the second one that was really effective, I thought, where Eowyn is giving him some soup and he lets slip that he's actually like 80s years old (I vaguely remember this being right out of the book?). It was funny too, they should have kept it.