Movie Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

I consider this the second best in the Lord of the Rings series, and it’s nearly as good as the first one. It’s a triumphant return to the Hobbits — Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) — being the heart of the story, and Sean Astin’s performance really is remarkable. His performance in this movie is the best in the entire series by anyone.

This movie also has a lot of what was great about The Two Towers book, like the climb up the stairs and the inevitable Shelob confrontation, which does not disappoint. It just might be the best sequence of the entire series.

This movie still has the characters being largely divided, as did The Two Towers, but they converge in a much more effective way. This is largely because the other two Hobbits — Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) — are involved in the story from the beginning, rather than being off doing their own thing. The battle that occurs is great, but it’s probably not as great as Helm’s Deep, if we’re being honest. It’s more satisfying on a character level, though, with Theoden (Bernard Hill) standing out in particular as being heroic.

If I have a complaint, it’s the Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas subplot. it seems a bit cheap to get an army of ghosts to come fight your battle, but I guess if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the last stretch of the battle has to be fought without him, which proves that Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) is a worthy king, given that he keeps his promises.

The most common complaint of this movie is probably that the ending goes on for too long. And it sort of does; I get it. There are several moments where the movie could have cut to credits. But, you know what? This is the conclusion not just to a three and a half hour movie, but to a trilogy of over nine hours in length. It makes sense that the ending would go on for a while, so I’m largely okay with it. The ending works emotionally, so what’s there to complain about?

Rating: 10/10