(Concluding post on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Read the first three posts, here, the April 1 and April 4 posts.)
Disappointing. Overblown. Anti-climactic. Bungled. These are just some of the adjectives I shall not be using to describe the third part of The Lord Of The Rings. How about amazing, stupendous, jawdropping and overwhelming? – Chirstopher Tookey of the Daily Mail (UK).
2003 saw the culmination of the trilogy juggernaut. By now, the first two installments had already reaped almost US$1.8 billion worldwide, including the US. The theatrical/extended DVD campaign ensured that the hype had built up to frenzied levels come December 17, 2003. But there were also some fears. May 2003 and November 2003 saw the unraveling of another potentially blockbusting trilogy. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions ended the trilogy that was never to be (The Matrix was intended as a single film – it’s cult popularity encouraged Warner Bros to plonk down another US$300 million for the mega sequel, split into 2 parts). We found it entertaining and the ending was as good as it got, but critics and the worldwide box office thought otherwise. Fears of another Matrix loomed. But there was an undercurrent of optimism throughout the year – a feeling that if two installments had done so exceedingly well, it would take a Herculean effort to ruin the third. The only question realistically therefore was, how well would it do? Would it outdo its predecessors? Could it be the first film after Titanic to breach the US$1 billion mark? All questions were answered with a resounding ‘aye’ within 5 weeks of its global release. It opened to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Tomatometer ratings stood at 96% – unheard of in this day and age with only 5 negative reviews (and that too only because of minor grouses) among almost 170 reviews (it currently reads 198 out of 210). Reviewers were falling head over heels in describing the glory and magnificence of the epic. Peter Jackson suddenly became the apple of the eye of the entertainment industry – a real life fairy tale come true. New Line became the poster boy studio. Analysts and watchers lauded it to the sky for its boldness and daring in taking up the venture. The marketing and media hype was unbelievable; not a day passed without some news or the other about Return of the King. It remained in the top half of Google News for weeks. William Arnold at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer lauded – “It's an exhilarating payoff for our past year's wait and all the exposition of the first two episodes: a film that concludes the saga with a blissful unity and satisfaction, and sweeps us away with its nail-biting narrative flair and filmmaking verve.”
David Edelstein couldn’t contain himself – “Of all the things to love about The Return of the King, it's those lightning shifts in scale that I find the most thrilling. I don't mean just the sudden impossible hugeness of it -- those hundreds of thousands of demonic Orcs led by massive trolls and winged dragons called Fell Beasts and eight-story elephants called Mumakil as they surge toward a seven-tiered city that soars into the sky. I mean the way Jackson cuts from that amazing vision to something small: a spiked wheel grinding as the heavy gates of the city close; then a human face—Pippin, say, with his mouth grimly set and his eyes shocked open; then a few hundred thousand more marauding Orcs. So you get eye-popping spectacle, then a close-up with texture and weight, then a flash of human emotion, then more eye-popping spectacle. The threads are awesome, but it's the weave—of the epic and the intimate, the airy and the visceral, the lofty and the blood-curdling—that's spellbinding. This is the best of the three Rings movies—more than that, it makes the others look even better. You can finally see the arc of the trilogy: not just J.R.R. Tolkien's, with its blend of Norse and Christian myth, but Peter Jackson's. The New Zealand director got his start in the horror genre and has always grooved on splattery excess and a manic invasiveness. It works like gangbusters for Tolkien, whose demons are the enemies of the land itself. They plunder Middle-earth with infernal machines and try to rip out its guts; they claw for the accursed title Ring of Power like drug addicts. Jackson brings an intensity to the battle of good and evil that makes the stiff, well-mannered drones of George Lucas' Star Wars epics look like stick figures in a bad, Japanese-made Saturday-morning cartoon.”
For once, everything heaped on it was justified. No amount of praise, encouragement, plaudits or appreciation would be enough for this monumental achievement. For the viewer, arguably the ultimate judge, it restored faith in the idea that popular entertainment can soar to majestic heights. We were absolutely smitten by the films. The film was a miracle, an extravaganza far surpassing its predecessors and in many ways, more stunning. It was a profound statement of the extraordinary power of moving images and sound. It kept us gasping from start to end. The most striking thing about the completed trilogy was that it was made with such total integrity, and absolutely none of the compromises that a studio thinks it has to make these days to appeal to all demographics. In the best sense of the term, it was an "art film." It was so impeccably and artfully done that we could hardly breathe, immobilised by emotion, suspense, the sheer spectacle, the intimate drama. We couldn’t remember any time any movie managed to demand so much emotional investment from its audience and yet paid back such impassioned dividends.
King was a massive conclusion to an astounding epic of astounding imagery and audacious ambition. It’s a spectacle, an undertaking unlike anything else that had ever touched the silver screen. The funny thing is, what stuck with us wasn’t the overwhelming scale of this film, but the little moments of subtlety, of caring, and hope generated by genius direction and obsessively loving detail. The things we remember most weren’t Oliphaunts trampling hundreds of soldiers or legions of the cursed boiling through the Gondorian hills. The things that made Lord of the Rings and especially Return of the King were Gandalf talking to Pippin about hope, Aragorn striding off to face his destiny, the beacons of Gondor being lit for what feels like it must be the first time in hundreds of years, Theoden coming to grips with the fact that maybe for all of them, this could be the end. Not that the big showpieces weren’t wonderful, but what elevated this, and all three of these films, so far above everything else was the softness in between. At one point towards the end of the film, just after we've watched an incredible sequence in which horsed cavalry battles an army of gigantic Ohliphaunts (an eye-popping scene), we see Frodo, standing alone in Mt. Doom, holding the power of the world in his grasp. He stands on the edge of a precipice. In his hand the Ring. Below him is the means to destroy it. He holds ultimate power but at that moment, no creature has ever looked so small. With fire raging around him and the power to change the course of the world, Jackson reminds us how very average and in some ways powerless the people caught up in these grandiose schemes truly are. No matter how big or epic this story became, Peter Jackson remembered that it is the human elment which drove his story and the little things which made it work.
King crossed the US$1 billion mark about two weeks into February 2003. It opened to an astonishing $125 million in its opening weekend and as of today stands at around US$1.2 billion worldwide. Nominated for 11 Oscars, it became only the third movie after Ben Hur and Titanic to win all the awards nominated for. Peter Jackson was rewarded with a Best Director award and the film won the Best Picture award, quite expectedly. What was especially exciting for us was the long due Best Adapted Screenplay award. Anyone familiar with Tolkien’s text would have to admit that it is a gargantuan task to make it filmable. Howard Shore won the Best Original Score (score reviews at Filmtracks), which again was a shoo-in. No film in recent history had the privilege of having such a magnificent score, one that took you the heights of euphoria and to the depths of terror all in the course of 72 minutes. The stirring single “Into the West” by Annie Lennox snatched the Best Song award. Naturally the FX team had been winning since 2001. Practically every technical department was awarded, except cinematography (which won it for Fellowship), perhaps due to the predominant use of miniature filming in King. The Oscar sweep was preceded by another 100% record at the Golden Globes where it won 4 awards including Best Director, Picture, Music and Song. A slew of awards from various bodies followed that with the Oscars 2004 finally giving Hollywood’s overwhelming stamp of approval for Peter Jackson’s efforts. Not that it mattered much of course. The Academy would have sidelined King at its own peril. Ignoring it would have been akin to ringing its own death knell.
So we say, Thank You to Peter Jackson and his Rings co-creators – from the producers and the screenwriters to the gaffers and the costume designers and everyone in between. Thank you for giving the passionate fans of 'fantastical filmmaking' a trilogy to enjoy and embrace. Thank you for never losing sight of the vaunted source material, for treating your audience like an intelligent group, for giving us an alternate universe so full and rich and believable that it nearly defied description. And let the world of passionate Tolkien geeks and hardcore movie freaks rejoice. Not a dry dreary costume drama, not a glorified TV-movie-of-the-week, not a weepy yawnfest. A rousing adventure epic full of heart and soul and thrills and chills, a movie that showcased the finest sort of epic sensibilities ever caught on celluloid, a movie that people cheered at and cried over and discussed for hours and enjoyed over the course of three consecutive years, a trilogy that dazzled everyone from the haughtiest film critics to the widest-eyed young kids.
The Lord of the Rings – the best film trilogy ever made in the history of cinema.
What’s there to rate in the three films except to give additional bonus points! 10/10 to all films, with Fellowship getting 1 bonus point, Towers, 2, and King, for the first time and the last, 3.
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Disappointing. Overblown. Anti-climactic. Bungled. These are just some of the adjectives I shall not be using to describe the third part of The Lord Of The Rings. How about amazing, stupendous, jawdropping and overwhelming? – Chirstopher Tookey of the Daily Mail (UK).
2003 saw the culmination of the trilogy juggernaut. By now, the first two installments had already reaped almost US$1.8 billion worldwide, including the US. The theatrical/extended DVD campaign ensured that the hype had built up to frenzied levels come December 17, 2003. But there were also some fears. May 2003 and November 2003 saw the unraveling of another potentially blockbusting trilogy. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions ended the trilogy that was never to be (The Matrix was intended as a single film – it’s cult popularity encouraged Warner Bros to plonk down another US$300 million for the mega sequel, split into 2 parts). We found it entertaining and the ending was as good as it got, but critics and the worldwide box office thought otherwise. Fears of another Matrix loomed. But there was an undercurrent of optimism throughout the year – a feeling that if two installments had done so exceedingly well, it would take a Herculean effort to ruin the third. The only question realistically therefore was, how well would it do? Would it outdo its predecessors? Could it be the first film after Titanic to breach the US$1 billion mark? All questions were answered with a resounding ‘aye’ within 5 weeks of its global release. It opened to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Tomatometer ratings stood at 96% – unheard of in this day and age with only 5 negative reviews (and that too only because of minor grouses) among almost 170 reviews (it currently reads 198 out of 210). Reviewers were falling head over heels in describing the glory and magnificence of the epic. Peter Jackson suddenly became the apple of the eye of the entertainment industry – a real life fairy tale come true. New Line became the poster boy studio. Analysts and watchers lauded it to the sky for its boldness and daring in taking up the venture. The marketing and media hype was unbelievable; not a day passed without some news or the other about Return of the King. It remained in the top half of Google News for weeks. William Arnold at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer lauded – “It's an exhilarating payoff for our past year's wait and all the exposition of the first two episodes: a film that concludes the saga with a blissful unity and satisfaction, and sweeps us away with its nail-biting narrative flair and filmmaking verve.”
David Edelstein couldn’t contain himself – “Of all the things to love about The Return of the King, it's those lightning shifts in scale that I find the most thrilling. I don't mean just the sudden impossible hugeness of it -- those hundreds of thousands of demonic Orcs led by massive trolls and winged dragons called Fell Beasts and eight-story elephants called Mumakil as they surge toward a seven-tiered city that soars into the sky. I mean the way Jackson cuts from that amazing vision to something small: a spiked wheel grinding as the heavy gates of the city close; then a human face—Pippin, say, with his mouth grimly set and his eyes shocked open; then a few hundred thousand more marauding Orcs. So you get eye-popping spectacle, then a close-up with texture and weight, then a flash of human emotion, then more eye-popping spectacle. The threads are awesome, but it's the weave—of the epic and the intimate, the airy and the visceral, the lofty and the blood-curdling—that's spellbinding. This is the best of the three Rings movies—more than that, it makes the others look even better. You can finally see the arc of the trilogy: not just J.R.R. Tolkien's, with its blend of Norse and Christian myth, but Peter Jackson's. The New Zealand director got his start in the horror genre and has always grooved on splattery excess and a manic invasiveness. It works like gangbusters for Tolkien, whose demons are the enemies of the land itself. They plunder Middle-earth with infernal machines and try to rip out its guts; they claw for the accursed title Ring of Power like drug addicts. Jackson brings an intensity to the battle of good and evil that makes the stiff, well-mannered drones of George Lucas' Star Wars epics look like stick figures in a bad, Japanese-made Saturday-morning cartoon.”
For once, everything heaped on it was justified. No amount of praise, encouragement, plaudits or appreciation would be enough for this monumental achievement. For the viewer, arguably the ultimate judge, it restored faith in the idea that popular entertainment can soar to majestic heights. We were absolutely smitten by the films. The film was a miracle, an extravaganza far surpassing its predecessors and in many ways, more stunning. It was a profound statement of the extraordinary power of moving images and sound. It kept us gasping from start to end. The most striking thing about the completed trilogy was that it was made with such total integrity, and absolutely none of the compromises that a studio thinks it has to make these days to appeal to all demographics. In the best sense of the term, it was an "art film." It was so impeccably and artfully done that we could hardly breathe, immobilised by emotion, suspense, the sheer spectacle, the intimate drama. We couldn’t remember any time any movie managed to demand so much emotional investment from its audience and yet paid back such impassioned dividends.
King was a massive conclusion to an astounding epic of astounding imagery and audacious ambition. It’s a spectacle, an undertaking unlike anything else that had ever touched the silver screen. The funny thing is, what stuck with us wasn’t the overwhelming scale of this film, but the little moments of subtlety, of caring, and hope generated by genius direction and obsessively loving detail. The things we remember most weren’t Oliphaunts trampling hundreds of soldiers or legions of the cursed boiling through the Gondorian hills. The things that made Lord of the Rings and especially Return of the King were Gandalf talking to Pippin about hope, Aragorn striding off to face his destiny, the beacons of Gondor being lit for what feels like it must be the first time in hundreds of years, Theoden coming to grips with the fact that maybe for all of them, this could be the end. Not that the big showpieces weren’t wonderful, but what elevated this, and all three of these films, so far above everything else was the softness in between. At one point towards the end of the film, just after we've watched an incredible sequence in which horsed cavalry battles an army of gigantic Ohliphaunts (an eye-popping scene), we see Frodo, standing alone in Mt. Doom, holding the power of the world in his grasp. He stands on the edge of a precipice. In his hand the Ring. Below him is the means to destroy it. He holds ultimate power but at that moment, no creature has ever looked so small. With fire raging around him and the power to change the course of the world, Jackson reminds us how very average and in some ways powerless the people caught up in these grandiose schemes truly are. No matter how big or epic this story became, Peter Jackson remembered that it is the human elment which drove his story and the little things which made it work.
King crossed the US$1 billion mark about two weeks into February 2003. It opened to an astonishing $125 million in its opening weekend and as of today stands at around US$1.2 billion worldwide. Nominated for 11 Oscars, it became only the third movie after Ben Hur and Titanic to win all the awards nominated for. Peter Jackson was rewarded with a Best Director award and the film won the Best Picture award, quite expectedly. What was especially exciting for us was the long due Best Adapted Screenplay award. Anyone familiar with Tolkien’s text would have to admit that it is a gargantuan task to make it filmable. Howard Shore won the Best Original Score (score reviews at Filmtracks), which again was a shoo-in. No film in recent history had the privilege of having such a magnificent score, one that took you the heights of euphoria and to the depths of terror all in the course of 72 minutes. The stirring single “Into the West” by Annie Lennox snatched the Best Song award. Naturally the FX team had been winning since 2001. Practically every technical department was awarded, except cinematography (which won it for Fellowship), perhaps due to the predominant use of miniature filming in King. The Oscar sweep was preceded by another 100% record at the Golden Globes where it won 4 awards including Best Director, Picture, Music and Song. A slew of awards from various bodies followed that with the Oscars 2004 finally giving Hollywood’s overwhelming stamp of approval for Peter Jackson’s efforts. Not that it mattered much of course. The Academy would have sidelined King at its own peril. Ignoring it would have been akin to ringing its own death knell.
So we say, Thank You to Peter Jackson and his Rings co-creators – from the producers and the screenwriters to the gaffers and the costume designers and everyone in between. Thank you for giving the passionate fans of 'fantastical filmmaking' a trilogy to enjoy and embrace. Thank you for never losing sight of the vaunted source material, for treating your audience like an intelligent group, for giving us an alternate universe so full and rich and believable that it nearly defied description. And let the world of passionate Tolkien geeks and hardcore movie freaks rejoice. Not a dry dreary costume drama, not a glorified TV-movie-of-the-week, not a weepy yawnfest. A rousing adventure epic full of heart and soul and thrills and chills, a movie that showcased the finest sort of epic sensibilities ever caught on celluloid, a movie that people cheered at and cried over and discussed for hours and enjoyed over the course of three consecutive years, a trilogy that dazzled everyone from the haughtiest film critics to the widest-eyed young kids.
The Lord of the Rings – the best film trilogy ever made in the history of cinema.
What’s there to rate in the three films except to give additional bonus points! 10/10 to all films, with Fellowship getting 1 bonus point, Towers, 2, and King, for the first time and the last, 3.
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
IMDB Info on Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
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