Lightning Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Synopsis
Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) finally reach Mordor. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) leads the World of Men against Sauron’s army in order to give Frodo and Sam an opening to take the One Ring to Mt. Doom.

Review
Now this, this is what I have been expecting out of this series. After two movies of moving pieces, everything finally all comes together. This movie hits the ground running, and it needs to because of the many threads it needs to tie up. I can’t think of many new things to say that I haven’t already in my reviews of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. I do wish there was more Gimli because I absolutely loved all of his scenes in the previous movies and always enjoy watching him, especially with Legolas. The character makeup and costumes from the previous films were some of the best I have seen but wow does The Return of the King blow them both out of the water! My only complaint is the long run time. It’s nearly four hours long and has like five endings. Every time it would fade to black, it felt like a clean ending… then another scene would happen. It is great to see everyone’s stories wrapped up so it’s not too terrible, but it made a long film feel even longer.

I thought The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was GREAT :-D. The action was the best of the trilogy, the costumes were the best of any recent movie I’ve seen, and every story thread gets wrapped up. I can see why this trilogy is well beloved. It may have even found its way to the top of some of my lists.

Also check out my reviews for the rest of The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

Trailer

Cast & Crew
Peter Jackson – Director / Screenplay
Fran Walsh – Screenplay
Philippa Boyens – Screenplay
Howard Shore – Composer

Elijah Wood – Frodo
Sean Astin – Sam
Viggo Mortensen – Aragorn
Orlando Bloom – Legolas
Ian McKellen – Gandalf
John Rhys-Davies – Gimli
Billy Boyd – Pippin
Dominic Monaghan – Merry
Christopher Lee – Saruman
Andy Serkis – Gollum (voice) / Smeagol
Hugo Weaving – Elrond
Liv Tyler – Arwem
Cate Blanchett – Galandrie
Marron Csokas – Celeborn
Bernard Hill – Theoden
David Wenham – Faramir
Miranda Otto – Eowyn
Karl Urban – Eomer
John Bach – Madril
Sean Bean – Boromir
Ian Holm – Bilbo