In this, the third and final installment of The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship charges towards the greatest battle of their lifetime, united in their singular goal of giving Frodo a chance to purge the mythic Middle Earth of the all too mysterious Ring of Power by casting it into the volcanic fires of Mount Doom. Traveling across treacherous enemy lands, an exhausted Frodo must increasingly rely on Sam and Gollum as the powers of the Ring continue to test his allegiance, and his precarious sense of self.
The Return of the King is a vastly different movie from its two predecessors. For those unfamiliar with the story and the characters, The Fellowship of the Ring was a daunting endeavor, as new characters would spring up at every turn. Just keeping the names straight was enough to alienate even the most enthusiastic moviegoers. As curiously fresh and welcome as that first movie was, it was too much of an introductory set-up. There was almost no character development, as the bulk of the movie was devoted to making sure that all the various characters could get some screen time. This had the unfortunate effect of making the movie seem almost tiresome. The Two Towers was a marked improvement on the experience of The Fellowship of the Ring, as the characters had already been introduced, and hence the action and character development could begin. However, the conflicts that occupied The Two Towers were still at a level far too abstract to gain any of our personal allegiance. The struggle in the second movie was between peoples, and not individuals. While this certainly added to the feel of epic struggle that The Lord of the Rings is known for, there simply was not enough of a human touch to the story so as to make it approachable for the average viewer.
The Return of the King is the payoff. The characters have been introduced, the conflict has been set, and the familiarity with Middle Earth that is necessary for our emotional investment in the struggles presented in the film has been established on account of the first two films. Here is where the real story begins; where the characters become people we can actually care for; where we have enough trust in director Peter Jackson that we can comfortably allow him to take our hands and lead us toward his vision of epic fantasy. Indeed, The Return of the King is the darkest, the most emotional, most personal of the three films. It is here that we discover the depths of courage, friendship, and power in the likes of Frodo, Sam, and Aragorn. Every character is personally challenged, and each one is revealed to have such faults as plague us in our everyday lives. The people who inhabit the film are shown to be reflections of our own selves, rife with doubt, rage, and fear. Their humanity is exposed, and it is an overpowering revelation. After The Return of the King, the myth of Middle Earth, Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn can no longer be merely myth. It becomes our myth. It is the myth of the Everyman.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy will prove to be one of the most enduring feats in all of cinema for the very simple reason that it succeeds in satisfying our natural need for myths to sustain our existence. In this age of scientific materialism, where everything is reducible to the random interplay of atoms and dead matter spinning aimlessly across a vast, purposeless universe, the human subconscious has naturally become thirsty for a story that can combat the nihilism that necessarily results from the progress of the sciences. What the human subconscious needs is a story that can, at the very least, allow us to dream of a world for ourselves in which things matter—a world where things have an ordered purpose about them, where the notions of good and evil are not merely social constructs, but are rather imbued with a sense of cosmic importance. Our subconscious demands that there be a meaning to existence; it demands that our struggles in life be justified.
Peter Jackson has achieved precisely this spiritual and psychological need for myth in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And with it, he has reclaimed our very humanity.
I’d give Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King an A.
"...will prove to be one of the most enduring feats in all of cinema for the very simple reason that it succeeds in satisfying our natural need for myths to sustain our existence."
director: peter jackson
starring: elijah wood, sean astin, ian mckellen, viggo mortensen, john rhys-davies
