Basically, only the dragged out five endings kept me from giving this one a 10 overall, and a 10 for script/story as well. I respect PJ's decision to work them all in, and the way he didn't want to end it with a triumphant conclusion, rather than the melancholy "world goes on" one like the book had, but I think it weakened the joy and sheer entertainment value of the film.  I commented more on the endings in a blog a few days after I posted my initial review, and you can see it further down this page.

I didn't hear from anyone who has seen the movie with agreement or disagreement for my unusually positive comments, but I did get an email from Leo about a variety of things, including one paragraph on RotK.

I meant to talk more about the time flow and Shelob in movie 3, but didn't get to it yesterday.  Which makes this email pretty handy.

Shelob ended up in the 3rd film, despite being in the second book, as most fans know.  The thing is, the books are very out of order; events with Frodo/Sam/Gollum move far ahead of the other plot line, in terms of chronology.  The movies are much more real time synching, so they can cut back and forth and add tension and drama.  RotK does an excellent job switching back and forth between the story lines (That was my main initial complaint about TTT theatrical version. I thought it cut back and forth between the multiple story lines too frequently and jarringly.), giving you enough of each to keep you interested in them yet not so much of one that you forget about the other(s).

Anyway, in the books the Shelob sequence is at the end of book two, but since the movie tells the two storylines back and forth, with adjusted chronologies, Shelob isn't in movie 3 until past the halfway point.  It wouldn't have worked at all in movie 2, at least not without massive re-editing, and moving that story line well ahead of the other one.

Jackson did take a few liberties with the time flow, mostly in the later stages.  After the battle of Gondor, they ride off to lay siege to the Black Gate almost immediately, and get there practically that afternoon, which means that Sauron has to empty Mordor to get the orcs to the gate for defense, which opens up the path across to Mt. Doom for Frodo and Sam.  That's how it works in the book, but my memory of it was at least a week or two for the whole trip, with Frodo/Sam stumbling and hiding across the valley of the volcano for some miserable days, and the humans having a long and difficult ride towards Mordor as well.

I wonder if there will be another 10 minutes of riding/walking for the two storylines in the extended edition?  It wouldn't be bad, but it's not like I'm itching to buy the DVD just for that.

As for the rest of Leo's mail, I liked the wargs in TTT, and there's one warg seen in RotK and it's pretty cool, though it's mostly just standing still and snarling viciously.  I hardly remember them in the books at all, and thought it was mostly PJ taking something that was used more in The Hobbit and adding it into LotR.  In any event, it at least provided an action break in the middle of the long walk to Helm's Deep, and some artificial suspense with the vanished/drowned Aragorn worries...  Okay, so it wasn't all good.

December 23, 2003

1) Oddly enough, of the five negative reviews, two are from San Diego papers.  One is from the only major newspaper in town, by a critic who I read regularly while living there, but can't remember a thing about his preferences or anything interesting he ever said. His review is pretty bad, mostly because he says he's read the novels, and then goes on to complain about aspects of the movies that were taken directly from the novels. Bright lad.

2) The other San Diego review is from something called the San Diego Metropolitan, which I've never heard of, despite living in San Diego for most of the past two decades. Their critic says it's too long and he can't keep the characters straight and he's glad the trilogy is over.  Which makes you wonder why he sat through it in the first place, if he didn't like or understand the two prior films.

3) The guy in the Christian Science Monitor didn't like it and was bored, and seems to much prefer the novels, though his complaint about the movie is that it's too long and too much happens. (Hint, the novels are a lot longer and a lot more happens in them.)

4) The fourth negative review is from the Newark Star Ledger, and I'd read it but they require you to accept non-secure cookies and I can't be arsed to turn down/off my browser privacy settings just for their stupid asses.

5) The fifth negative review is the one I can't resist commenting on.  It's from something called Eclipse Magazine, it's by a reviewer who goes by the unwieldy handle of malexandria, and it gives the movie a final score of C, at the end of an embarrassingly bad review.  It's amazing that someone would spend the time to write two pages about a movie they so clearly dozed through, or just didn't pay attention to, but more than that, the ignorance of basic film techniques is laughable.  Here's a quote:

The entire stuff with Denethor (John Noble) was just bad - bad acting, bad writing, bad motivations, just bad. We all know that he's crazy and not all there, but there's no real explanation for his behavior. Sure he is upset that his son was killed, but it felt like I was missing a vital part of his story arc. There is a powerful moment in the film, where Denethor commands his son, Faramir (played with a quiet dignity by David Wenham) to send his troops into a battle that everyone knows will bring certain death.

They build this moment up, make you care about it. When Pippin sings his song of despair and they cut to Faramir and his troops riding off. I'm there with this film, I'm connecting with it, really caring about his fate, I'm getting goose bumps, but the scene is totally ruined by two editing choices, one where they cut between Faramir, Pippin singing (great), and then to Denethor EATING! I couldn't help but laugh during this otherwise powerful moment. It was a perfect moment ruined by a stupid, stupid, STUPID, editing choice. And then the worst part, they cut away from this to go to something else for 15 or 20 minutes (we don't get to see the battle), so any emotional momentum built is totally lost.

I'll grant you that his motivations were lacking, but that's partially since they didn't have enough time to devote to him in the long movie and had to turn him more into an insane wanna-be king rather than going into depth, but given how he's presented, his motivations are entirely logical, for his character.  I thought the acting was fine as well, but it's the second quoted paragraph here that's just pathetic.

The scene with Denethor eating while his son rode off to an (apparently) suicidal battle was cut with him eating and Pippen singing for a reason, honey.  It wasn't some sort of accident in the editing room; it was meant to convey the utter contempt and lack of concern the insane Denethor felt while his only surviving son rode off to die in a hopeless assault.  Did you think Denethor was just a really messy eater when he kept biting into tomatoes and letting the bloody red seeds spill down his chin as his son's bloody doom approached?

And the reason there wasn't any of the "battle" shown was because there was no battle. Did the sight of about 5000 orcs drawing arrows and letting them fly from fortified positions not tip you off to the outcome of that particular engagement?

I first read this review a few days ago, and ever since them Malaya and I have been cracking each other up by asking, in a mock-confused tone, "Why did they keep showing the king eating while his son rode to battle? I don't understand."

I'm going to generously assume the reviewer is aware that PJ edited/directed this scene as he did on purpose, and that it was designed to show the madness of Denethor, and that most people found it very effective and tense, and that it just didn't work for her (the reviewer). The alternative, thinking that someone who has viewed and reviewed hundreds of movies on their own movie website really didn't grasp that there was a technique being used there... it's just too depressing.

The ever-amusing CAP Alerts guy has gotten his review of RotK up as well, but unfortunately it's pretty dry.  He admires the artistry of the films, while decrying the violence and working in his usual rap about anything with magic.

Though The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a magnificent work of art it is "hardcore" PG-13, fortunately not because of the hardcore language and sexual immorality typical of PG-13s, but unfortunately because of intense and graphic violence [Prov. 3:31-32] and issues of occult - witchcraft, sorcery, wizardry (Offense to God). [Deut. 18:10 - 12; 2Chr. 33:6; Rev. 22:14-15]

This is followed in the review by a long paragraph about how basically everything is a form of trickery promulgated by Satan to deceive us into accepting Satan and rejecting god, and how any style of adapting the bible to fit modern days and morals and realities is evil. I assume this guy reads Greek and Aramic so he can go back and read the original dead sea scrolls, since otherwise he's reading adaptions of the bible that were done when it was translated into various other languages centuries after it was originally written.  I also assume he cuts and pastes that spiel into every review of any movie with sorcery in it.  I couldn't get through it all, but click to the review if you want to try your luck at enduring his ramblings. 

This line from later in the review did crack me up though.

Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) continue their journey to Mordor and ultimately to Mount Doom to throw Precious into the inferno of Mount Doom from which the ring was made. "Precious" is a name given to the focal ring which conjures in the wearer lust for evil and makes the wearer invisible.

Um, it's not actually named "Precious," sir.  "Precious" is an adjective they use to describe the ring, much as the Bible is your own precious.  The only movie I've ever seen with anything actually named "Precious" was Buffalo Bill's yappy Bichon Friese in Silence of the Lambs.  And the dog was not shiny and golden and worn over a finger. Though it did like chicken...

January 5, 2004

Checking in on the Return of the King box office, it's still flying along on top for the third weekend, and should pass $300m domestically by Tuesday, which would tie it with Spider-Man for the fastest ever to that amount.

I also checked in on the reviews again, and there are now 189 listed, with 183 of them positive.  I talked about the first five negative ones a couple of weeks ago, but now that a 6th one has been added, you might want to check it out, though I wouldn't really recommend it.  Here's a sample of the reviewer's wit.

There’s numerous other characters involved, but we get neither characterization nor plot. It’s just the guys we’re rooting for against really ugly monsters. The battle scenes are intended to thrill, but they are so driven by special effects and a lack anything invested in the individuals fighting that they are merely spectacle.

Meanwhile Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) continue to make their journey to destroy the evil, magical ring in Frodo’s care, and Gollum – an animated character partially acted by Andy Serkis – is either helping them or looking for his chance to steal the ring. To further confuse matters, Gollum is also known as Smeagol.

Yes, and Sam was also called "The Fat Hobbit" several times.  So confusing! This leaves me to wonder if he really couldn't follow the plot well enough to figure out why Gollum was also called Smeagol, or if he's just throwing this in in an attempt to make it sound like the movie was hard to follow and dumb.  And if it's the latter, since he spends the entire rest of the review saying how everyone is going to see it 500x anyway... why bother?

The sad part is... he's right.  I'm dying to go see it again, and Malaya is game for a second go 'round as well, so we'll probably part with another hard-earned $12 and sit through it again this week.  Not that that's such a chore...

And speaking of the negative LotR:RotK reviews, I read and commented on four of them, but skipped the 5th since I would have had to accept invasive cookies from the New Jersey paper's site that hosted the review.  Going above and beyond the call of duty for a blog reader, Jimmy read the site from a computer at his work, and quoted it to me in an email, and thus I've read it, and all without needing to spend several seconds to lower and then raise my privacy settings!  Here's a quote.

How did Sam and Frodo get separated from Gandalf and Aragorn again? Where's Saruman? And why exactly is everyone fighting so hard to preserve a land of hereditary rulers and cranky old guys in dresses?

If the answer isn't immediately clear, it may be because you don't share Tolkien's reverence for the ruling class and implicit belief in the superiority of Northern Europe. Always lurking on the page, it becomes more explicit in this installment, where you can't help but notice the abundance of blue-eyed, fair-skinned heroes fighting off hordes of swarthy brutes.

That's not necessarily an offensive choice in and of itself, or even inappropriate. Tolkien's Middle Earth was always a stand-in for an ancient, homogeneous, pre-Norman England; its whiteness can be a little startling but it's still preferable to those Hollywood movies that, trying to make the Middle Ages relevant, would drag in Sidney Poitier or Morgan Freeman as "the Moor."

But Jackson's movie doesn't ignore other races, or patronize them. It casts them as villains. Why is it, otherwise, that our heroes' latest enemies are said, ominously, to come "from the South," and enter riding elephants and wearing burnooses? Why, then, would Aragorn gives a rousing speech before the climactic battle, telling his troops that they fight for "the West" and all they hold dear?

For unquestioning Tolkien fans, however, the disturbing subtexts can be ignored.

Yes, that's really his main point in the review, and hey, strange though it may be, it's at least an original angle to take in reviewing the films.  I assume this reviewer holds up his "It's all just a bunch of white people!" review standard to all films, and therefore objects to about 90% of Hollywood and 85% of prime time TV, right?

It occurs to me that readers may think I have some point or am advocating some course of action with all of my comments on the very few bad reviews of Return of the King.  And while it might seem that way, it's not really the truth.  If you guys (and girls) want to email the reviewers and say they're stupid or wrong or whatever, go for it, but don't do it in my name.  I don't really care one way or the other; I just find it interesting to see what stuck in the craw of the few critics who didn't like such an amazing and nearly universally-loved film.

Okay, maybe you can write that one woman whose review of RotK went on and on about how the (apparent) death of Faramir was ruined by all those shots of his father eating messily while the hobbit sang background music.  It's been three weeks, but Malaya and I keep cracking each other up by randomly saying, "And why did they keep showing the king eating while the battle was going on?"

The thing about the bad reviews, like the "why was everyone white?" mention I quoted above, is that I like to see how people think.  It amuses me how often the negative reviews of RotK go off on some bizarre tangent, almost like that CAP Alerts guy somehow seeing evil and sin and exploitation in an entirely accidental near-butt grab of the annoying girl in Jurassic Park. Something that leaves the rest of us wondering how on earth that person got to the point where that one thing caught their attention while the rest of us never even noticed it.

And yes, I'm guilty of this myself, frequently, in my movie reviews.

January 8, 2004

Today we saw Return of the King for the 2nd time. Seeing it for a second time was interesting, though I probably liked it slightly less this time than the first time.  The mechanics of the storytelling were more evident to me, by which I mean that I could see various things thrown in solely to keep one or the other plot thread ticking along, as opposed to the good stuff like the battles and longer conversations and lighting of the beacons, which also kept the plot moving, but were enjoyable of themselves.  My feeling was that the Extended Edition will be a far better film when the quick "here's another scene of how hungry Frodo and Sam are" bits will be expanded into nice little vignettes, rather than just checking in so we don't forget the other characters.

I liked the battle scenes and the glorious moments, but they didn't impress me as much now that I knew they were coming.  The one I really noticed this time was the retreat from Osskiliath. The first time I was just ducking and squealing in glee at the spectacle of the Nazgul riders swooping down and devastating Faramir's men as they tried to retreat to the city.  I liked it the second time, but it seemed like a much quicker and less amazing scene, for whatever reason.

The other thing I noticed was how much the few stupid things in reviews stuck with me.  I couldn't hear anyone call the ring "My precious." without thinking of the clueness CAP Alerts guy somehow watching all 3 movies and coming away with the opinion that the ring is actually named, "Precious."  And during the entire "death of Faramir" scene all I could think of was what that other symbolism-oblivious reviewer said about how poorly it was edited with the scenes of Denethor eating interrupting the cool charging horsie battle.

Laughing every time someone says "precious" and giggling as Denethor loads his platter with food while Faramir rides to battle didn't exactly boost my viewing experience.

I did like a few things more, and the invisible Gollum piggyback ride at the end didn't look quite as silly this time, but overall my A+ the first time declined to an A- on the second viewing.

I also paid more attention to the multiple endings, and decided which ones I liked best.  They also seemed more gratuitous this time, since on the first viewing I wanted to know just how everything turned out (the movie differing somewhat from the books) and enjoyed them all, while on the second viewing I was more analytical and thinking about when I would have ended the movie, or when I thought it would have been best to end it.  And no, those aren't at all the same things.

To recap, the five endings are, in order:

1) Fade to black while Frodo and Sam are lying on the rock while the mountain erupts all around them.

2) Fade out after everyone is gathered around Frodo's bed and laughing and Frodo and Sam trade overly-meaningful stares

3) The coronation and marriage of Aragorn atop Minas Tirith which ends with everyone bowing to the four hobbits.

4) Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the last elves board the last elven ship in the harbor and sail off to the Elf Lands across the sea.

5) Sam walks into his home and hugs his kids and kisses his wife Rosie and shuts the door.  This is the actual movie ending.

In my initial viewing, I thought that #3 would have been the best to end with, since it wrapped up all of the essential plot points.  It was made clear that they were going to, so I didn't particularly need to see that the elves were sailing across the ocean.  And as for them taking Frodo and Bilbo with them, the whole "living with the elves is paradise" thing was much less developed in the movie than in the book, so seemed pretty irrelevant in the film.

Ending the movie with Sam returning home was even more unnecessary, given that we'd already seen him married to Rosie.  It was also jarring for those of us who have read the novels, since we expected to see him living in Bag End, not in his own lower-quality hobbit hole.

I thought it was an interesting choice by PJ to put in those last two endings, since the 4th one is very melancholy and sends the audience out in a much different mood than ending with #2 or #3 would have; a melancholy that is only partially erased by #5 and Sam's happy life.

#5 also puts the movie much more onto Sam, making you realize how much he is the chief character in it, more so than Aragorn or Frodo, really.  I'm not saying this is a great thing, or really should have been done; it's just how it is.

The final ending (and #4 as well, had that been the theatrical conclusion) also rob the audience of any good "clap for the great film" ending, since they're both thoughtful, fade out with mixed emotions, type things. As compared to #2 and #3, which would have both been "get the audience up and cheering" conclusions.  #3 would have been quite the crowd-pleaser, though it would have been painfully similar to Star Wars, with the huge hall of rebels watching the medal ceremony and cheering.

But all that being said, I think ending it after #1 would have made for the best movie. The hobbits have destroyed the ring and the battle has been won, and that's really all we needed for the film.  The rest is just gravy.  Possibly too much gravy.  I'd have been happiest with just #1 though, and the audience being left to wonder if Frodo and Sam died, or what.

It'll be interesting to see if the whole series of endings is tweaked much in the Extended Edition, when PJ has another hour of film to work in and can do it however he wants to do it.  Pity we have to wait until November to find out.

January 9, 2003

Here's a reader quote about Return of the King, spurred by my comments about it yesterday, following my second viewing. 

I just got to see it today (opening day for us), and I have to disagree with your opinions (because uit's fun to disagree).

Mostly about the endings. I loved ending #4. Loved it in the book, loved it in the movie. The book is filled with the things-are-constantly-changing, everything-passes, a new-age-is-coming feeling. I know it wasn't emphasized so much in the movie, but it is TOLKIEN, come on, everyone read the books! Also I NEED Bilbo to be immortal. It's a pity they made him age so much over 4 years, but ah well.

What I really missed was the whole cleansing-the-Shire plotline from the end. It would've been worth 15 minutes, and I'm sure Christopher Lee would agree :)

Anyways, great shots, I'm glad I saw it.

c-moka

I see his point, but Bilbo was so barely in the movie past Fellowship that I had pretty well forgotten about him and would have been fine never seeing him again.  I didn't dislike him; he just felt unnecessary, as did the whole overlong ending #4 on the docks.

As for the Scouring of the Shire, that's an odd one. I heard early on that it wasn't going to be in the movie, which had me wondering what they were going to do with Saruman.  This is a massive book plot spoiler, so stop if you've never read them, but in the book the Ents let Saruman leave after they flood out Isengard, since they think he's lost all of his power.  He travels to The Shire with Wormtongue and they take over and mechanize it, ruining the beauty of the place and basically enslaving the hobbits, all as a sort of revenge upon the four hobbits in the story.

After the end of the ring story, the 4 return home and find the Shire a smoking wasteland, and they organize the hobbits and kill or capture all of the cruel overseer humans, defeat the very evil Saruman, but try to let him go when Wormtongue finally snaps and stabs him in the back and is killed by arrows himself.

In the theatrical Return of the King we never see Saruman again at all.  We just see Gandalf telling Treebeard that he must never again leave his tower.  The fact that the water around his tower is about knee-deep, rather than a moat-like torrent as in the books makes this guard duty seem much more important.  But the ending scene with Saruman isn't in the theatrical, just in the extended edition DVD, and I've not heard how it goes. I can't see Saruman just being left in the tower forever, so is he killed?  Is Wormtongue killed?  Do they fight?  Is the whole cruel master/angry slave relationship between them kindled up in the movie at all in that spot, since it's not been shown at all previously.

I guess we'll find out eventually.

As for the Scouring of the Shire not being in the movie, I think it was okay to leave out.  It would be interesting to see on its own, but it's very much after the fact in the story, and especially so in the movie, which is much less about the hobbits than the books were.

Also, PJ kept the Shire pristine and perfect in the movies, as a sort of agrarian Eden, and perhaps it's better for us all to think of it as a perpetually peaceful and pleasant place, rather than just another part of a world in turmoil, as it's shown to be in the novels.

The topic is very open to debate.

Part of this was pulled from the initial review since it was distracting. The rest was added from later blog entries on the subject.

December 18, 2003

So most people think it's great, and I'll discuss my reaction in a bit.  But in news that's more interesting than the movie, much of the time, how much money is it going to make?

Predictions for the opening week (5 days, including Tuesday night previews) are all over the place, but are all pretty huge.  The usually pretty accurate Box Office Guru is going very bullish with a $137m prediction. The consensus prediction from the hundreds of people who participate in the weekly estimate game on Box Office Mojo (I'm not one of them) is $123 for five days, and $75m for the Fri-Sun weekend.

Those are pretty ballsy predictions, especially the Guru's $137m. The most any movie has ever made in one day is $42m, which was Spider-Man on the second day (a Saturday) it was out.  It was on about the same number of screens as RotK, but was over an hour shorter, so they got another showing or two per day.  I don't think RotK can possibly do more than about $30m any given day, mostly due to the running time.  It's probably going to beat that opening Wednesday, since they'll include the $8m it made in Tuesday night previews, but Thursday and Friday will be less since people won't be ditching work so much to see a movie on the 2nd and 3rd days, though it'll blow up again Sat and Sun, with sold out matinees all day both days.

To get to even $130m it would have to average $26m a day, which would be something like $35m Wed, $14m Thur, $21m Fri, $32m Sat, $28m Sun. I guess that's possible, but we'll find out soon enough.  In fact by the time you read this estimates for Wednesday will be out, and we'll get some idea of the likely total.

I saw a couple of reviews that said it would probably break Titanic's all time world wide and US record, and while I think that's unlikely (Titanic made $600m US and another $1b world wide, which is almost double any other movie ever, when adjusted for inflation), RotK does seem like a good bet to be the 2nd movie ever to do over $1b in total worldwide box office.  The fact that it's an enormously better movie than Titanic might even have something to do with the total gross, but the only way a movie makes that much is if people go to see it, and see it, and see it, over and over again, for months.  Total gross is based on hype anyway; and if you disagree feel free to explain how mediocre films like Harry Potter 1 and 2, Spider-Man, and Independence Day are all in the top 10, and especially how the shockingly-disappointing Episode One ranks there as well?

The total rankings are dominated by recent films, even after adjusting for inflation, since movies now open on far more screens, in far more countries, and tickets cost more money every year as well. Not to mention that movies now have vastly more promotion, commercial tie ins, etc. But what can you do?

I'm not even going to try and predict total world wide box office for RotK, but considering that it's much more eagerly-anticipated than even TTT was, it's a better film, and everyone wants to see how the whole damn thing turns out, it's hard to imagine it making less than 125% of what TTT did, if not more. I wouldn't be surprised if it made $500m in the US and another over $700m or so worldwide.

And if you dig up this quote and throw it back at me in six months when the movie's run is ended and I'm grossly inaccurate, you really need to get a hobby.

December 19, 2003

RotK box office first, then a reader mail and some commentary.

Here's a very detailed article on the opening day gross. The movie made made $34.1m on Wednesday in the US, counting the $8m from midnight sneaks, which was the most ever for a movie opening on a Wednesday, by a pretty fair margin.  It's also making yesterday's "pulled from my arse" estimate of $35m look pretty good.  A 97% accuracy rate that wins me... absolutely nothing.  I (sort of) predicted $35m Wed, $14m Thur, $21m Fri, $32m Sat, $28m Sun for a total of $130m, so we'll see how the weekend goes.

December 22, 2003

LotR:RotK had the biggest opening five days in the history of cinema, in total dollars, and was damn big in the US as well.  I talked about this quite a bit last week, so I'll just link to the Box Office Mojo wrap up article, and leave it at that.

The Return of the King raked in an estimated $246.1 million on over 14,000 screens worldwide from Wednesday to Sunday, setting a new record for a five-day worldwide opening. It handily eclipsed former title holder The Matrix Revolutions' $202.8 million, which bowed practically everywhere in the world (109 markets) to get that high and to inch past prior record breaker The Two Towers' $201.8 million.

Note that Return of the King has only opened in 28 territories so far, compared to the 100+ that Matrix 3 did, and you'll see just how much more it could have made with a simultaneous world wide roll out.  Of course Matrix 3 had no legs and faded quickly after the huge opening, so perhaps RotK is smarter to open more slowly.  Then again, Matrix 3 wasn't a very good movie and wasn't a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, so maybe they were smart to let everyone who wanted to see it see it as soon as possible, before the poor word of mouth killed any delayed openings?