Yet another cinematic trilogy draws to a close. Great things comes in threes : "Star Wars"; "The Omen"; "Indiana Jones"; "The Omen"; "The Godfather"; "The Matrix" .....(er, maybe I should rethink this particular theory).
And now this. The final four hours of "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. But this isn't a trilogy, nor is it just a remake or a continuation (it's not "The Lord Of The Rings 3-d : The Revenge", for example), simply the third and final part of the story.
And my god, it's long. Two hundred and ten bum-numbing minutes. That's three times as long as "Toy Story". There's not even an intermission : just a constant, endless trawl of dialogue, CGI, and stuff. Endless long panning shots - Look At This! It's Big! It's Slow! It's got.... Ominous music!
But overall, it just makes more than my butt feel numb. By the time I get to the 178th minute, (or, including the Extended Editions, the 624th Minute), I just don't care. There's a thin one and a fat one on a quest to throw a ring into a fire. There's two stunted sidekicks providing comic relief and bumbling through whatever's going on. There's the bad guy from "Ghostbusters" in a wig who kills some stuff. There's Ian McKellen doing his very best impersonation of Alec Guiness, talking mystic mumbo-jumbo, returning from the dead, and generally being a bit of a grand ole wizard. And there's Count Dooku The Wickerman whose mysteriously absent from this despite being in the first two movies.
Forgive me for being jaded.... But like, so what? I really find it hard to care now. It's almost predictable. Before seeing this I could've told you for example, at leats some of what happens. A big show off between a huge army and an even huger army where the not quite so big army, and therefore the Good Guys, manage to win somehow. This time, by throwing a ring into a fire and all the baddies just dropping dead. Which is very "Episode 1:The Phantom Menace" is it not?
And here we are then. There's the never-explained Eye of Sauraman. And Sauaraman is like, the big bad guy who, despite not owning the Ring, is somehow powered by the ring and managing to channel all his powers into finding it. And despite being a really huge eye, it can't see a thing. It just sweeps the horizon from a very Big Tower like a Gestapo searchlight. But Suaraman is never actually seen. Let alone explained : What is he? How is he? Who is he? And why does he need the ring so much? How come he can operate without it, yet when it melts he loses all his power? He is some kind of psychic ring vampire?
Oh my. What a load of inconsistent rubbish.
Rule 1 : if you are going to invent your own fantasy world at the very least make it consistent. Make it make sense. Make it seem real.
So yes, there's the laugh-inducing scene that sees Gollum (again, wonderfully played by Andy Serkis who stands head and shoulders above the rest of the cast bar the fabulous McKellen, and the-sadly-absent-in-this-episode Christopher Lee) fighting an invisible enemy. So one just sees a bit of CGI jumping around punching a transparent bit of scenery. Which had at least half of the audience at my particular screening snorting with derisive laughter.
It's not quite as good as that.
There's also the long, protracted, twenty or thirty minutes after the film ends that extrapolate the fate of every character you've met so far : every son, daughter, long lost third cousin, that the viewer probably doesn't care about, and frankly, spoils the emotional closure of the film. After a touching but unexplained "Sailing into the sunset" scene (which, being the SIXTH post-conclusion epilogue was trying our patience) there's still more. This time with the Fat One from "The Goonies" mucking about in his stupid, calloused Hobbit Feet with his Wife and Hobbit Spawn.
Urgh. I haven't even mentioned the sudden, unexplained, and mystifying Eagles that soar from the sky and magically save the day. Or the fact that Hobbits seem to be made of Asbestos and hence don't burst into flame when surrounded by molten lava. Or the Army of Undead Cursed Zombie Pirates that suddenly turn up chanting Mighty Mouses' infamous refrain "HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!" (Ok, maybe not, but it certainly seems like).
Overall, "The Return of The King" isn't bad. It's an admirable, faithful adaptation of grandiose, deeply flawed book, and makes a spectacularly good job of it. But it thinks it's Great, and it isn't. It's merely very good, as long as you don't try to make sense of it, or its cod-catholic psuedo-intellectual treatise on the Nature Of Evil and like, stuff.
It's not as good as it thinks it is, which makes it not as good as it could've been.
Leave your brain at the door and you might think it's a fitting end to the most ambitious and greatest Cinematic Trilogy ever made. But then again, they haven't made "Ghostbusters 3 : Rise of The Zombies" yet, have they?
