Jeremy’s Tophunder №42: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

9 min readJun 9, 2020

My favorite Oscars host of my lifetime is Billy Crystal. To me, he was the host that best represented what the show really is — a celebration of Hollywood. Of the hosts we’ve had in the last 30 years or so, Billy Crystal exudes Hollywood more than any other.

One of my favorite Billy Crystal jokes at the Oscars came in 2004, the year that Return of the King cleaned up. During his monologue, he remarked that Return of the King had “11 nominations — one for each ending.”

I mean, it’s a great joke, mostly because it’s very on the nose. The last half-hour of the movie certainly drags. A piece of you wants to shout at the screen “just get on with it, already!” It’s already a three-hour movie, and the last 20–30 minutes is just a series of scenes that very well could could be the ending to the movie, and then they just tack on another scene that could be the ending? It’s kind of ridiculous.

On the other hand, though, the cast and crew and everyone spent the better part of an entire year filming the trilogy, with an additional 4–6 weeks of filming per year for finishing touches on movies 2 and 3, all the while the post-production crew was working at a break-neck pace to edit the movies and get all of the visual and sound effects in place. (In fact, all three movies had different editors because they were worried that one person couldn’t do the job alone and still deliver the finished cuts in time.) It’s one of the more ambitious projects in recent Hollywood history, so if they want to give a little flourish and tack on all the feel-good endings, I think they have a right to do that. They earned it.

And, they were rewarded for it — they won all 11 Oscars they were nominated for, tying a record for wins, and setting a record for sweeping all categories they were nominated in. It’s on a very short list of most decorated movies in the history of the Oscars.

They deserve it, too. The movie as it stands alone is already fantastic, but when you factor in the massive undertaking of the trilogy as a whole, it would ridiculous for them not to be recognized for it.

Return of the King, for me, lies somewhere in between the all-around brilliance of Fellowship of the Ring (which I have ranked at №13) and the occasional boredom of The Two Towers (which I have ranked at №86). I’ve mentioned this before in this space, but the part of the series I love the most is when the Fellowship is together and on their journey — I think the story gets considerably less interesting once the group splinters, mostly because the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimili storyline is so much more compelling and entertaining than the others.

One of the reasons I dropped The Two Towers all the way down to №86 was because of how much I’m simply bored by Frodo and Sam trudging their way to Mordor (and constantly whining about it to boot). Return of the King has significantly less trudging and slightly less whining, and it really makes all the difference. I talked about this in my Two Towers post, but it’s a real point of tension in my relationship with the series — Frodo and Sam and Gollum are the ones going to destroy the ring, and the ring is the whole point of the series, but I’m just not that entertained while I watch them. Return of the King injects a lot more excitement into their story. The Sam vs. Gollum feud finally comes to a head, with Gollum “framing” Sam for eating all of the food, causing Frodo to turn on him. Frodo and Gollum go on alone, and Gollum runs Frodo into the trap of the giant spider (which, thankfully, isn’t nearly as terrifying to watch as it was when I was 14). Sam comes back to save the day, and they re-unite to go destroy the ring, which is a scene loaded with tension and action as well.

That’s ultimately the reason why Return of the King is so much higher on the list — the best parts of the movie (the siege of Minas Tirith and the assault on the Black Gate) compare reasonably well with the best action sequences of the first two movies. Helms Deep is still the best, but the two from Return of the King are probably next among the best battle scenes of the series. We get some great Hugo Weaving as Elrond scenes, and we get a few great scenes from The Crazy Guy Who is in Charge of Gondor but Isn’t The King (I don’t even remember his name, mostly just that he eats small tomatoes rather messily).

Return of the King occupies a slightly different place in my mind than the other two movies of the series, though. When I think about Fellowship of the ring, I think about all of the scenes I like and the music I like and the cinematography that I like and how I like Goofy Gandalf more than Serious Gandalf. When I think about The Two Towers, I think about the first two hours that kind of drag their way along, and I think of the incredible Helms Deep sequence. But when I think about Return of the King, I think about all of those things in addition to the parts of this movie that I like. Somehow, in my head, Return of the King serves as a stand-in for the series as a whole. Part of me isn’t happy about it, because I’d like to be able to think about Return of the King as a stand-alone movie, but part of me is okay with it.

If there’s anything that truly stands out from Return of the King, it’s probably the lighting of the beacons, when Gandalf and Pippin manage a way to call for air on behalf of Gondor when The Crazy Guy Who is in Charge of Gondor but Isn’t The King can’t be bothered to realize that he’s putting the city in danger. All three movies have big sweeping aerial shots, but I think this one is my favorite.

When Peter Jackson conceived of the series, it was originally going to be one movie. But as he continued to immerse himself in the universe, he came to realize that covering the whole story in one movie would only be a disservice to the story and the movie. He ended up with three movies that clock in at 9 hours, 18 minutes (or 11 hours, 26 minutes if you go with the extended editions, which you absolutely should at least once in your life). I’d be willing to bet that somewhere deep in the recesses of Jackson’s brain, he wishes he could have released the entire extended series as one movie, box office returns be damned. With a budget of nearly $300 million (unheard of at the time), obviously they had to split the series up into component parts and release them separately. But Jackson (probably) genuinely saw them as one absurdly long movie. That’s why I think it might be okay that I see Return of the King in somewhat the same way.

The Lord of the Rings series affected me much in the same way the Star Wars series did growing up, albeit I was obviously a bit older when I saw Lord of the Rings for the first time. I remember loving the Lord of the Rings movies in part -because- they were so long. It was the perfect excuse to be able to sleep over at a friend’s house on a Friday or Saturday night. As the thinking went, if we start the movie after dinner, maybe around 8 o’clock, it wouldn’t be over until past 11, and there’s no way mom or dad will want to come pick me up that late. I’m sure my parents knew exactly what I was doing, but I still felt like I was getting away with something. And it worked, at least some of the time. I had one friend who had two TVs set up in his room, one for regular TV, and one with all of his video games hooked up. So a group of us would pile into his bedroom, have some Lord of the Rings movie running on one TV, and Super Smash Bros. or GoldenEye or some other classic game on the other TV, and we would have ourselves a goddamn sleepover party.

On more than one occasion in my life, I have sat down on a sofa sometime in the late morning, and watched all three Lord of the Rings films, in succession, in one sitting. The only reasons I would get up would be to eat, drink, or use the restroom. I’ve done it with a group of friends, I’ve done it with one other person, and I’ve done it all by myself. I haven’t done it in many years, but I consider it one of the real accomplishments in my life (and I don’t mean that sarcastically). I love doing movie marathons, and the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition marathon is one of the longest, but most satisfying ones you can knock out in one day. I’m not saying I recommend it for everyone — 9+ (or 11+) hours worth of movies is a lot for one day. But I have to tell you, when Return of the King ends and the credits start to roll, you genuinely feel like you accomplished something. It energizes you. It’s weird, but it’s happened multiple times, so I have to think it’s not a coincidence.

I wouldn’t call Lord of the Rings my favorite film series, but I actually haven’t spent a ton of time putting thought into it. It very well could be. One of my first thoughts on the matter is that, actually, it’s the only film series where the entire series is represented on my Tophunder. But given the modern trends of major studio movie-making, I start to think that only having three movies in the series will eventually hold it back. There are just going to be more cool moments I like over the course of six Mission Impossible movies, or eight Fast & Furious movies, or nine Star Wars movies than there are in three Lord of the Rings movies. But it’s a series I love.

And, we circle back to Return of the King, on its own. It wraps up the series perfectly, and offers probably the most emotionally resonant scenes over the course of the three movies. Fellowship is the movie to watch if you want to be transported to a different world. Two Towers is the movie to watch if you want to be blown away by amazing action. But Return of the King is the movie to watch if you want to really feel something. I think that’s its lasting legacy in the context of the series. It kind of brings us back to the beginning, which brings us back to the endings — each of those fake-out endings leaves you with a different feeling, and it’s the sum total of those feelings that really stays with you. They could have gotten away with a simpler ending, but in a roundabout way, I’m actually kind of glad they went for the longer one. It leaves me feeling something, and that’s the sign of any great movie.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan

10. Inglourious Basterds

11. The Big Short

12. The Prestige