I noted way back in entry #73 in the countdown that my favorite part of Peter Jackson’s massive and ambitious The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the second part, The Two Towers. I wasn’t upset or anything about the middle part being placed much lower than the other two. I’m mostly baffled how The Return of the King got to #5. It’s in no way a bad film or anything. I strongly suspect the reason this part won Best Picture at the Academy Awards was for the same reason I see the entire trilogy as one long film: Return of the King puts an end to a story that took three years to get to theaters for audiences to see, something like 16 months to film, who knows how many hours of CGI work, and all kinds of other pre- and post-production that it’s a triumph that these films, individually or collectively, turned out as well as they did. I will be (pleasantly) surprised if Peter Jackson ever makes anything to equal this trilogy again, but how did Return of the King, the film I consider the weakest of the three, end up at #5?
I think it mostly comes from the fact that Stacker based its list on both Metacritic and, more importantly, IMDB scores to decide on their 100 greatest and in what order. And even if Return of the King is the weakest, it’s nowhere near bad or anything. I don’t even disagree about putting it on a top 100 list. I mostly just wonder why it’s so darn near the top spot.
To be clear, there’s very little to complain about here. Tolkien’s characters are more larger-than-life heroic archetypes than real people save the Hobbits depending on your interpretation. Many of the things Jackson did throughout the previous two entries in the trilogy is still on display here, most notably the way his films tend to slide back and forth between the macro and the micro. The Siege of Gondor is a large scale battle with orcs, trolls, the Nazgûl, and those giant elephant things attacking the city with everything they’ve got, but the film will still take a moment to check in on Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) and see how they’re fairing given the huge danger they’re in along with the rest of the capital city. Jackson’s camera will even give some personality to an orc commander, and while orcs are not the slightest bit sympathetic, it is somewhat noteworthy that this particular orc, after chastising his troops for trying to avoid falling masonry catapulted their way from the city, likewise steps aside at the last second before he is also squashed. We may not care much if that orc lives or dies, but keeping track of a character like that is a nice detail.
Additionally, the named characters of The Lord of the Rings are generally well-developed men and women (even if women are few) to the point where, even if I don’t know if I would call the characters three-dimensional, they are the sorts of characters the audience would want to spend time with. Sure, there are moments that the Tolkien purists might have objected to, but who isn’t psyched when Éowyn lets the Witch-King know she is no man before plunging a sword into what passes for his face? Has Viggo Mortensen ever looked more heroic in his life than when he’s leading a charge, be it of ghosts or mortal soldiers, against the evil that is Sauron’s numerous minions? When even more clownish characters like Merry (Dominic Monaghan) or Pippin get to show their stuff, and the entire war comes down to what two Hobbits–and whatever Sméagol (Andy Serkis) used to be–do once they reach the fires of Mount Doom, we can even see the humblest creature seem somehow to be a larger than life hero.
By the by, it occurred to me during this viewing that Bilbo (Ian Holm) must have been of far sterner stuff than other characters since he managed to more or less stay himself while holding onto the ring for decades while Frodo (Elijah Wood) succumbs to the ring over the course of the three films. Maybe it had something to do with proximity or something, and Bilbo still misses that ring during one of the film’s many epilogues, but I find that a little impressive in hindsight. Then again, Sam (Sean Astin) spends just as much time in the ring’s general vicinity as Frodo, even trying it on at one point, and he seems to be completely immune to its power since, as I see it, the only reason he’s reluctant to return the ring to Frodo is because he’s worried about what it’s doing to Frodo and not because he wants the ring for himself. Fan theories seem to suggest that the humbler the creature, the less likely they are to be tempted by the ring, and they don’t get much humbler than Samwise Gamgee. Doesn’t he insist on calling Frodo “Mister Frodo” during the entire duration of the trilogy even after it could be argued he’s Frodo’s equal and not his servant no matter what he thinks of himself?
If anything, it also speaks volumes about how pathetic Sméagol/Gollum is that he threw so much away for a ring that only makes his life worse. It’s not a particularly ornate ring. For all the talk that supposedly it has power, it mostly seems to only turn the wearer invisible and greatly extend a lifespan. The ring mostly just corrupts because that’s what evil does, and Bilbo’s talk of the ring at the end of the film shows that the evil that was the ring is still around even if the ring itself isn’t.
It helps that the main heroes of the trilogy are so well-realized. I took note at the end this time about how the four Hobbits react when the Men and Elves of Gondor kneel to them. Merry has a somewhat dumb grin on his face because he’s probably the least intelligent of the four. Merry is a bit more serious, for despite his name, he learned what the world was like a lot faster than his longtime pal Pippin and took things seriously well before Pippin did. Sam just looks exhausted, a bone-weary sadness that says he’s not even sure how he got through all that. And Frodo has his worried look, the one that says he’s concerned about something even if, for the first time since the first Nazgûl appeared in the Shire, he really doesn’t have anything to worry about right that second. I suppose Frodo knew even then he’d have to leave his three friends, but it doesn’t really come up right away. More likely, and judging by the scene of the four back in the Shire at the local tavern, it’s more like the four have all lived through more horror and violence than most Hobbits will ever see in their lifetimes, and you don’t just walk that off.
In the end, that may be one of the lessons Tolkien tried to teach through his work, and one that Jackson tried to pass along with his films: evil is always out there, and sometimes people need to do something about it. Destroying the ring didn’t end evil. It just ended one source of it. It is up to the good people of the world to do what is sometimes sadly necessary, and sometimes, the greatest of heroes can come in the unlikeliest of packages. It wasn’t near demigod Elves or the unbeatable Riders of Rohan or even a returned king that saved the world. It was the humblest of creatures performing a nearly impossible task that none of them had ever dreamed they would ever do at all.
NEXT: If I was a bit baffled at how high The Return of the King is on Stacker’s list, I may be a little bit moreso with the last look at one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greats. Would I consider 1954’s Rear Window his all-time best? Not really, but it’s still a damn good film
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