"Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King" (2003)

To finish off the trilogy I started, which feels like ages ago, was only actually 2 months ago, I watched "The Return of the King". I've been eager to see this movie, but the time investment of putting aside 3 and a half hours for a film is a bit more difficult than I thought. Thankfully for the long Christmas break, I had a chance to catch up and finally finish off this epic trilogy. Hopefully the last movie will answer the questions the first two brought up, does Frodo destroy the ring? Is Gollum really helping the Hobbits along? Will Sauron win his final war on Middle Earth? Will Sam and Frodo finally kiss? All this and more after the break.

Story has not really changed too much from the first two, the two Hobbits, Frodo and Sam, are still on their epic quest to destroy the ring at Mount Doom. Gondor and Rohan have teamed up together to defeat the army of Sauron, thankfully they get some backup by some unexpected help.

I never felt the LOTR trilogy to be like most other trilogies. The fluidity between the three movies is impeccable, there is no loss in quality of acting, characters, story telling, fantasy or anything. Every part of the movies stay fairly similar to one in other. Yet, somehow the third movie pumps in more action, more monsters and even more of that epic feeling LOTR has. 

The Dream Team

There might be one slight drawback to this. Watching three movies split up one main story can get a bit tiresome. I hate to think about it, but the movie is essentially the hike of three hobbits to a mountain. Even though the story talks about the great wars, one cannot escape the initial story. The great adventure gets to be a bit dreary, almost asymptotic. Ten minutes to get to Mount Doom, ten minutes to get to the top, ten minutes to walk in, ten minutes to think about dropping the ring, etc. It almost felt like the end was never going to come. There can be too much build up.

But that was my only real complaint, everything else was great. To kick it off I got my first introduction to Witch King, Lord of Nazgul. What a mean ass motherfucker that guy is. He looked scary, sounded scary and top it off, he rode a dragon. Not one person creature in the world universe can be uncool whilst riding a massive dragon.

I'm on a dragon, FEAR ME!

To answer the questions I had earlier on. Frodo does finally destroy the ring (sorry for spoiling an 8 year old movie). Gollum did become the third wheel to Frodo and Sam's plan of the ring. Sauron never won the war on Middle Earth, but I hear he rocks a killer ice cream parlour on 22nd street. Lastly, Frodo and Sam never kiss. Not saying I would of wanted them too, but it would of explained a bit more about their relationship. And to top it all off, Sam gets some side sugar from that crush he had in the first movie, Rosie.

Finally the trilogy is complete, I'm pretty done with the LOTR series right about now. The movie ended off nice, tied off any loose ends it did have and took me for a ride of epic fantasy, adventure and battles. Just imagine if they had a fourth LOTR movie? Crazy. I'm sure I would of enjoyed this a lot more if I had read the books before. The amount of detail this movie has is almost too much for me, I'm sure LOTR fans liked all the detail. I for one liked the entire trilogy, but I'm not sure if I'll revisit it any time soon.