My local paper this morning gave Return of the King four out of four stars. The review also couldn’t resist taking swipes at the third movies of other trilogies, such as The Matrix and even The Godfather. I really don’t want to get in the position of defending The Matrix but it really seems unfair to compare the The Return of the King and The Matrix Revolutions as far as how successfully they cap off a trilogy.For example, The Lord of the Rings was a fully fleshed-out story before cameras ever began to roll on the first take of scene one. Tolkien had fourteen years to work out the intricacies of plot and character development; unlike the Wachowski Brothers, who painted themselves into a corner after film one and then had to try their best to come up with something satisfying. Or George Lucas, whose latest trilogy reworks his Star Wars universe so much there are rumors of even more substantial makeovers to make the original three movies fit.
But soon maybe all the film critics will view the movies as intended, as one story. And they won’t carp on the “multiple endings” of the third film, since it isn’t bringing to close a 3.5-hour-long movie but a 9.5-hour-long one. (And maybe they also might get it straight that Éowyn is not King Théoden’s daughter.) A co-worker will be seeing ROTK tonight, and I’ll be seeing it tomorrow. I still have to get my Legolas costume together. I found a nice blonde wig but it’s a bit curly, and I fear I might look more like Teri Garr than Thrandúil’s heir[b]*[/b].
By the way, I just found out something very cool: if you buy Howard Shore’s The Return of the King score from iTunes, you can burn it to specially designed CDRs!
Here’s something else I found. Sideshow Weta is giving away one of their cool Balrog statues. Sign up to win!
* I’m kidding. I’m dressing as Prince Imrahil, as a sign of protest over how his character was left out. (I was originally going as Treebeard, but the costume is difficult to sit down in and there was also the risk of poking fellow moviegoers in the ears.)
