He says return the ring
Jan. 3rd, 2004 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatSo, I saw The Return of the King today. There are some spoilers in what follows, so if you're the kind of person who cares about that kind of thing and you haven't seen the movie and/or read the book, you might want to skip the cut part.
Overall, I thought it was probably the best of the trilogy, although, since they're all part of the same story, it might not make that much sense to rate it in that way. As in the other films, the scenery was excellent. The white city of Minas Tirith stood out as one of my favorite scenes, but I also liked Mordor and the Shire. I thought starting out the movie with Gollum's origin was a neat touch. I was looking forward to Shelob the giant spider's appearance in the LAST movie, since she had appeared in the second book, but I guess they figured that movie was long enough anyway, so she was in Return of the King instead, and I think she was pretty well-done. (By the way, I used to pronounce the spider's name as "Shell-ob" until I read somewhere that it was derived from "she" (as in "female") plus "lob" (an archaic word for "spider"), and the movie supported the "shee-lob" pronunciation.) A few more random observations:
1. I thought the cartoony technique of showing Frodo's footprints when he was invisible seemed a bit corny and out of place in the film, but I'm not sure how it could have been done any better.
2. Didn't Merry and Pippin grow abnormally tall for hobbits in the books, due to their drinking Entdraught? They remained typical hobbit size throughout the movies.
3. Wasn't the Steward of Gondor (Denethor?) a horrible father? "Son, I wish you had died, instead of your brother! Now I'm going to try to burn you alive!"
4. I kind of wish they'd kept in the part where Saruman had taken over the Shire, but I guess that would have made an already really long movie longer than anyone would want to sit through.
Oh, and I heard Neko Case on the radio for the first time ever. Well, I'd heard the New Pornographers on the radio, but not just her. WHYY (where I'm going to volunteer on Tuesday) was doing some Hank Williams tribute, and they played her version of "Alone And Forsaken." It was cool.
Overall, I thought it was probably the best of the trilogy, although, since they're all part of the same story, it might not make that much sense to rate it in that way. As in the other films, the scenery was excellent. The white city of Minas Tirith stood out as one of my favorite scenes, but I also liked Mordor and the Shire. I thought starting out the movie with Gollum's origin was a neat touch. I was looking forward to Shelob the giant spider's appearance in the LAST movie, since she had appeared in the second book, but I guess they figured that movie was long enough anyway, so she was in Return of the King instead, and I think she was pretty well-done. (By the way, I used to pronounce the spider's name as "Shell-ob" until I read somewhere that it was derived from "she" (as in "female") plus "lob" (an archaic word for "spider"), and the movie supported the "shee-lob" pronunciation.) A few more random observations:
1. I thought the cartoony technique of showing Frodo's footprints when he was invisible seemed a bit corny and out of place in the film, but I'm not sure how it could have been done any better.
2. Didn't Merry and Pippin grow abnormally tall for hobbits in the books, due to their drinking Entdraught? They remained typical hobbit size throughout the movies.
3. Wasn't the Steward of Gondor (Denethor?) a horrible father? "Son, I wish you had died, instead of your brother! Now I'm going to try to burn you alive!"
4. I kind of wish they'd kept in the part where Saruman had taken over the Shire, but I guess that would have made an already really long movie longer than anyone would want to sit through.
Oh, and I heard Neko Case on the radio for the first time ever. Well, I'd heard the New Pornographers on the radio, but not just her. WHYY (where I'm going to volunteer on Tuesday) was doing some Hank Williams tribute, and they played her version of "Alone And Forsaken." It was cool.
