LUDIC LOG

I went to see Lord of the Rings: Return of the King tonight. However, earlier today, having ignored the usage instructions entirely, I drank half a bottle of NyQuil at seven o'clock in the morning, so much of the last 20 hours or so are pretty much a blur. If you expect any coherent or insightful comments about the flick, kindly look elsewhere. But if you're looking for some half-assed codeine-haze observations, then by all means, read on.

First off, I liked it. I was going to say "needless to say, I liked it", but it's never needless to say. But I did. I liked it, I'll probably see it again, I'll almost certainly buy the DVD, et cetera. Overall, I think it was better than Fellowship of the Ring but not as good as The Two Towers -- although much of the reason it wasn't as good as the second installment had to do with plot considerations that the filmmakers couldn't really do anything about. The movie has been extremely well recieved so far, with the most common caveat being the slightly overlong ending, which does indeed give a lot of false stops and a slightly anticlimactic feel at certain points. But, again, it's hard to quibble too much about this, since once all the fighting is over and the plot/action climaxes are done, all they can really do is give you emotional climaxes. Which, of course, they do in spades. It's probably unfair to call the ending emotionally manipulative, but that's exactly what it is. I mean this more as an observation than a criticism -- it's clearly supposed to be emotionally manipulative, and it succeeds admirably in that regard.

It's an entirely suitable end to the trilogy -- all loose ends nicely tied up (though see below), and with no discernable drop-off in quality (which gives it a marked advantage over the Star Wars trilogy; while Star Wars geeks all over the country are carping defensively about how the LotR trilogy has no "staying power" and so on, there's no denying that, even leaving aside the abysmal prequels, Return of the Jedi is largely a dud); they even managed to end the movies the same way. The big scenes from the book are all there, for the most part. The one that I noticed the absence of most strongly was the scene where the defeated Saruman, isolated in the tower of Isengard, attempts a spell of seduction on those outside. I understand, though, that this will be on the expanded DVD. Question: if you've got a movie that's four fucking hours long, why not just put all the extra scenes in there anyway? Answer: to get people to buy the DVD, stupid.

What worked for me:

- They cut back on the overuse of incidental music. No offense to the talented Howard Shore, but the score in the first movie just pummeled you into submission. It was used with a much lighter touch in the second and third movies.

- One of the areas in which Return of the King improved on The Two Towers was in its pacing. It seemed like in the second movie, they forgot about some of the subplots for extended stretches of time, and had to go back and shove them in lest they dangle. The bits with Merry and Pippin being carried around by Treebeard, for example, seemed to go on forever and almost seemed like an afterthought. I think The Two Towers is a bit better on first blush, but Return of the King was generally tighter.

- The battle scenes. What can I tell you? They were tremendous. Even the big, cheesy setpieces (like Legolas' downing of the oliphant, for example) worked for me. The effects were top-shelf as usual, the armies were fully realized, the battles maintained that vital sense of chaos and confusion while never entirely falling apart so they became impossible to follow. You could see Eowyn's confrontation with the Nazgul coming a mile away, but it still hit you at a gut level when it happened.

- The overall design of the film. The set designers aren't getting enough credit here, I think. Minas Tirith looked fantastic, Shelob's lair was well-done, and the lair of the Men of the Mountains was really excellent. One nice thing about the DVDs is that they allow you to look at what an attractive movie this is without being distracted by all the plot that's going in.

- The acting, generally. Viggo Mortensen, in particular, carried the trilogy in a way that was unexpected to me; he really became the moral center of the story, which is as it should be -- Jackson clearly understands that while Frodo is the protagonist of the story, Aragorn is its hero. Oddly enough, one of the most moving performances for me was the actor playing Merry, who nicely transformed into a bit of a hard man after his first battle. With such an ensemble cast and so much happening, you're really not going to get that many standout performances (I still thing the best actual acting in the trilogy is that of Christopher Lee as Saruman in the first movie and Gollum, generally), but there's a lot of really nice moments if you notice them.

What didn't work: a few things. The overuse of slow motion in the endpieces, which was noticable in general and which rendered the reunion of the fellowship literally laughable and absurd; the sick feeling I get in any rah-rah war scene (although that's not really the fault of the movie); the overreliance on Legolas and Gimli for comic relief. But all in all, a very successful conclusion to an amazingly consistent trilogy.

So, Peter Jackson, now what the fuck am I going to do every Christmas week? You've kept me occupied for three years. Now I got nothin'. Thanks a lot.