Over the weekend I finally had a chance to watch my copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-extended version. Needless to say I was impressed. Now I know my accolades are nothing new to any fan of the genre or of the literary work itself, but I just want to say that watching the whole thing unfold in front of me was just such a cool experience. And to think that these folks crafted THREE movies of this scope to tell a rendition of a piece of classic literature is really amazing.
When you stop and think about it, I mean damn - the sets, the props, the technology, the editing of the story, the sheer damn magnitude of the whole effort of creating three movies, together, at the same time is just unheard of. The effort itself should be considered one of the greatest achievements in cinematic history.
I don't know, maybe in this pop culture- instant gratification- short attention span world we live in today, it's easy to become jaded and toss this aside while we wait for the next episode of Survivor. But in any other time a movie series this huge would be a cultural event.
The attention to the smallest detail, the meshing and melding of the written story into a screenplay, the epic scale of the battles- this is the type of movie our genre needed. This is our "Casablanca", our "Sound of Music", and our "Godfather". "The Lord of the Rings" movies are what we lovers of fantasy adventure knew could be made if folks making it had the right amount of dedication, love of the story, and strength to fight for the integrity of the project. Thank goodness for Peter Jackson and his team. They set the bar so high with this trilogy, that if nothing ever comes close, at least we know that Professor Tolkien's vision was done justice.
Oh, and did you catch Bruce Spence's portrayal of the Mouth of Sauron? It was too damn cool!
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