The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

December 23, 2003

I can’t believe that it’s finally over.

Long. So long. Three hours and 21 minutes long. That’s 201 minutes. L-O-N-G. I wonder how long the extended edition will be? Even so, I did manage to make it all the way through without having to take a potty break, as did my mother-in-law, which impressed me mightily. The only downside was that we didn’t get to the theater in time to get a decent seat and ended up in the second row, craning our necks to see the movie. That was two days ago and my neck still isn’t right.

Notwithstanding the trip to the chiropractor that I am anticipating, The Return of the King was awesome. All the loose ends were tied up with a nice pretty bow. The battle scenes were amazing – especially the elephants. I wonder if they ate the elephants after the battle? Orcs and Goblins probably aren’t edible, but elephants should be, right?

Speaking of Orcs, did anyone else notice how much the Lead Orc resembled Sloth, from The Goonies? Seriously! His face was kind of squished, with one eye lower than the other, just like Sloth. He also had the weird pointy ears and was bald.

One of the trailers before the film was for Hidalgo. Aragorn is a cowboy! In the desert! It looked shitty, but I’ll probably watch it anyway, just for the Aragorn love. I admit though, my Aragorn love faded in Return of the King. Once he became King, he changed too much. He started talking in platitudes and even got a new accent. The kingly accent didn’t do anything for me – I preferred him in the first film, when he was a totally rude bad ass. And what was up with his hair? Why did he have it pulled back like that? He looked like he’d been hit by the Fab Five.

I was really hoping that Denethor would set Faramir on fire. Not that I had anything against Faramir, I just thought it would be cool to see him burned alive. Oh well. Speaking of Faramir, it was a good thing I watched the extended edition of The Two Towers before watching Return of the King, or I totally would have missed the sibling rivalry between Boromir and Faramir. Without seeing that scene, there is no reason at all for Denethor to be a total nutcase.

As I was leaving the theater, the meaning of the trilogy came to me, as if I had been struck by lightning. The whole point of the nearly 10 hours of trilogy is this…Sam was too much of a coward to ever get laid, so he had to go on an adventure and get some balls so he could ask a girl out. No wonder so many teenage boys love this story – it’s exactly the same as Weird Science! Seriously! Gary and Wyatt are just like Frodo and Sam! And Lisa is the Ring…okay, I’m going to stop now, before I get too much HATE mail.

In conclusion, if this sucker doesn’t net an Oscar for Peter Jackson for Best Director and/or Best Picture, I’m boycotting the Oscars. Not just this year…forever. I’m dead serious.

Here’s to hoping that The Hobbit comes out sometime around 2009!