Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) by Victor T — 02 Jan 2015

After two break taking installments, 2003 was the year when Frodo´s journey to destroy the Ring got to an end thus supposedly ending Middle Earth´s story. "The Return of the King" become the most profitable installment of the trilogy and also earned 11 Oscars, tying "Titanic" and "Ben-Hur" for the most earned Oscars, including Best Film. Is "Return of the King" the best installment of the series?

After the end of "The Two Towers", the majority of the Fellowship reunites until Gandalf learns that Sauron is planning to unleash his Orc army in Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, thus beginning the final battle for Middle-Earth´s fate. Meanwhile, Frodo, Sam and Gollum are on the final segments of their journey to Mordor but Gollum's intentions may no longer be to help his master fulfill his quest.

By the end of "The Two Towers", audiences expectations were higher than ever for a epic and worthy finale to this beloved and long story and thankfully, this final chapter succeeded in that aspect. By this point, it's redundant to mention all the greatness that Jackson archived with this trilogy (you can read about them in my reviews of the last installments) but still "The Return of the King" has some new elements worth to be mention: It counts with numerous well made battle sequences, some characters managed to still count with some character development and Jackson used the 3hr runtime wisely (excluding that 20 minute Epilogue) thus my problem with the pacing goes away mainly because the film is either focused on gigantic battle sequences or the intriguing relationship between Frodo, Sam and Gollum. Even if "Return of the King" gets a lot of things right and is an epic ending to this beloved trilogy, I believe that in comparison this is the weakest film of the trilogy mainly because of two reasons: 1) Excluding the Frodo, Sam and Gollum storyline, this film had almost no story, "The Two Towers" pretty much ended the rest of the story in a clever way and now the rest of the Fellowship is in the middle of numerous battles which are a distraction for both Sauron and the audience at times. 2) After the third act is over, at about the 3 hr mark, this film gives us 20 minutes of Epilogue with the now famous "8 endings" when they are not necessary at all other than providing some fan service to lovers of the source material. I know that people had ton of emotion when they saw those endings but for a movie they really drag and I believed that if Jackson had ended this film at the 3 hr mark it would have make "The Return of the King" an even better film, I know that every single fan of the source material will disagree with me because they want to see those happy moments after battling for the fate of Middle-Earth but that's my opinion as a non Tolkien fan.

"The Return of the King" is a fantastic ending to a fantastic story but unfortunately drags a little with that last 20 minutes. If you are a diehard lover of Tolkien´s work you will adore this final chapter no matter what. One of the best third/final installments of all time and one of the best fantasy films ever made.