The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

This final installment of Lord of the Rings is, at last, the conclusion to an epic saga that has been unspooling on screen only recently, but long since concluded in Tolkien's novels. Very quickly, those who have read the book are separated from those who have not - while the other movies were distinctly different enough to provide some surprises, the end is a foregone conclusion. It's all a matter of how sensitively Peter Jackson handles the emotions, the actors, and the plot.

Fortunately, Jackson grew as a director. Where the second film felt uneven, the movement between several different groups (Frodo and Sam, Pippin and Gandalf, Merry and Eowyn) is flawless. The film never loses its rhythm until the end, and by then we all need a breather.

My biggest concern about the film was the final battle. It only makes sense that Sauron would use the various troop types (flying forces, elite troops, heavy cavalry) to the fullest. Jackson does not disappoint. Trolls in battle armor wade into the fray as mumakils stomp on horses like ants. Wraiths on rothes tear up and terrify the unprepared human forces. And of course, orcs are everywhere; squealing, chortling, cackling, hacking, and dying.

Jackson strikes the perfect balance between emotional pathos on screen and his desire to craft a war film. That desire was a little too strong in the second film, where orcs ran up to a fortification with polearms in hand. Polearms exist almost exclusively to 1) stop other polearms and 2) stop the unstoppable charge of cavalry. To use them in an assault on a castle is just plain silly. Jackson used them for effect ("Lookit all those polearms!") but stopped just short of having the orcs start uselessly whacking away at the stones.

In Return of the King, the orcs are led by a weirdly deformed pig-like orc named Gorbag who provides some actual leadership. He orders his orcs to set their pikes for a charge when the Rohirrim cavalry arrives. He orders his archers to fire at the right times. And he's such a bad ass, when a huge stone is catapulted towards him, he merely steps a few feet aside and spits at the projectile. Given all that attention, you would think Gorbag would get a cool fight scene like Lurtz did. No such luck.

In fact, there are a few things that seem to be missing from the film. Certainly, the Mouth of Sauron is nowhere to be found (he'll be on the extended version, of course). There are also some unfulfilled promises, such as when the Witch King promises to "crush the White Wizard." He doesn't even go near Gandalf.

But those are minor quibbles that are noticeable only after seeing the film in the theater six times. There are so many great moments that it's hard to keep track of them all: From Aragorn transforming into a leader before our very eyes, to Legolas taking down a mumakil single-handedly, from a song by Pippin as Faramir charges to his doom, to the last charge of Denethor off the cliff of Isengard. There is joy, there is sorrow, and there are inevitably plenty of tears - on screen and in the audience.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is the Star Wars of our time. It is a parable about the importance of friendship in a world gone mad, a world that will always have a parallel in geopolitical events. It stands as a testament to Jackon's and Tolkien's vision that the film works on so many levels, as an action film, as an allegory, as a romance, as a fairy tale, as a political commentary, and as a popcorn flick.