DVD Review – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Extended Edition

So here we are: in the last chapter of The Lord of the Rings. While The Fellowship of the Ring was about beginnings, The Return of the King is about endings: the story threads that were so intriguingly introduced in the first film and drawn out in the second film must now find a resolution. Director Peter Jackson has had different challenges in each phase of what’s been essentially one long project, but The Return of the King basically puts all the cards on the table. Does the film trilogy finish strong, making a coherent whole?

The answer is a resounding yes. Jackson’s handling of The Return of the King is fantastic, and the film rises far above the weaker middle segment, The Two Towers, to tell a compelling, exciting, and emotionally moving story in which all the elements that have been put into motion in the previous two films finally come together into a thrilling conclusion.

As with each film in the trilogy, The Return of the King continues the overall storyline of The Lord of the Rings, while subtly shifting the emphasis of the story. The Fellowship of the Ring was a very personal tale, in which the hobbits (and Frodo in particular) gathered the courage to embark on a dangerous journey whose end they could not foresee. The Two Towers shifts more into the epic mode, dealing with the threat of Saruman and the corruption at the royal court of Rohan, and showing Aragorn finally starting to come into his own. Now, in The Return of the King, these two types of story – the personal and the epic – fuse together. One portion of the film follows the heroic thread of the story, as Minas Tirith prepares for the final attack by the forces of Sauron, while the other main story being unfolded is the very personal struggle of Frodo and Sam to bring the One Ring to the fires of Mount Doom.

Here Sean Astin should get a lot of credit for an exceptional performance in a pivotal role, because the character of Sam is now one of the most important in the entire film. This story thread starts to take on the mythic overtones of the hero’s descent into the underworld, which could have had the effect of distancing us from the characters involved. But cleverly Tolkien – and Jackson – uses the utterly down-to-earth and fully three-dimensional character of Sam to anchor this thread of the story. Frodo may be on a hero’s journey, but Sam worries about food, shelter, getting a good night’s sleep, and – most importantly – about his friend’s state of mind. And while Frodo (and Aragorn) basically get all the credit for being heroes, it’s Sam who has the determination and strength on a personal level to actually get Frodo to Mount Doom.

The fact that Jackson is able to make this fusion of the distant epic and the close-up personal story actually work, and work well, is a testament that he understood very well the difficulties inherent in adapting The Return of the King for the screen, and that he found successful ways to overcome those difficulties.

There are many reasons why Tolkien’s massive novel is difficult to bring to the screen, but perhaps the most overlooked one is that the internal structure, pacing, and development of The Lord of the Rings often have more in common with medieval sagas than the modern construction we call a “novel.” In a saga, characters are two-dimensional, conflicts are drawn in bold strokes, motivation is rarely developed, if it’s even considered, and plot is incidental at best. In contrast, the novel’s focus on characters, and its more modern pacing and attention to plot development, make the latter form more amenable to adaptation for film.

This is to a great extent why The Fellowship of the Ring translates best into film of any of the three parts of the story. Fellowship is fundamentally the hobbits’ story, and the hobbits are the most psychologically modern characters in the story; the portions of the story that focus on them are the most novelistic in terms of plot and characterization. Then, in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, the story starts to shift from this focused, character-based, novelistic type of storytelling to a more epic, saga-based type of storytelling, before eventually returning to a novelistic style at the very end. This presented Peter Jackson with a difficult challenge in bringing the last two parts of the story to the screen: balancing the epic and the personal levels of the story to make a satisfying film.

While I don’t think Jackson got the balance right in his adaptation of The Two Towers, he strikes just the right notes in The Return of the King. Here, the storyline certainly takes on epic proportions, as we can see in the new importance of the kingdoms of Rohan and Gondor to the story, and in the shift from Sauron’s menace as a personal threat to Frodo and the Fellowship, to a large-scale menace that threatens entire civilizations. Yet in this film the epic always remains rooted in the personal, so we genuinely care about what happens, and are struck with awe and terror by the events on-screen.

One reason The Return of the King‘s epic scenes work so well is that we are more invested in them: the characters we know and love are caught up in the events on-screen, and what’s even more important, they are changed by these events. For instance, Merry and Pippin were basically just along for the ride in The Two Towers, and they start out The Return of the King as exactly the same happy-go-lucky characters that they were before any of the story began. In The Return of the King, though, they finally are faced with tough decisions and the very real possibility of loss and pain. The involvement of the two hobbits with the fighting forces of Rohan and Gondor not only develops their characters, it also gives us a personal connection to the conflict.

When it comes to the journey to Mount Doom, Jackson was able to stick closely to the story as written, simply choosing to emphasize some aspects more than others. Gollum is a remarkable character in The Return of the King, with the film effectively fleshing out his interior conflict into full-blown schizophrenia between his “Gollum” and “Smeagol” personalities. This split is certainly present in the original book, but the additional development that Jackson gives it makes Gollum into an even more captivating and effective character.

Not all of Jackson’s adaptations work perfectly. One of his changes was to highlight some of the female characters, who are generally on the sidelines or completely off-stage in the original book. In the case of Eowyn (Miranda Otto), the warrior princess from Rohan, Jackson gets it exactly right in this film: she’s given just the right amount of screen time, especially now that the Extended Edition pays more attention to her, and she’s a very appealing and sympathetic character. Arwen, on the other hand, could have been written out of the script entirely and the film would have been the better for it. For one thing, she’s essentially irrelevant to the plot, unlike Eowyn. For another thing, as Liv Tyler gets more screen time, it’s more evident that there’s very little substance to her performance. Tyler may periodically allow a tear to trickle down her cheek, but her range of emotion here seems to be limited to “vaguely melancholy or mediative.“

There’s also the question of Jackson’s handling of the conclusion of The Return of the King… a very interesting question.

Where does the story of The Return of the King fundamentally resolve? With Frodo and Sam on the slopes of Mount Doom, the Ring destroyed, Sauron defeated, and Mordor shaking itself to pieces around them. The Fellowship’s mission has been accomplished, Middle Earth is safe, and the bond between Frodo and Sam has survived every challenge.

I think the film could have ended here, and it would have been a daring and possibly quite effective choice, but it would not be in line with Tolkien’s own vision. Fundamental to Tolkien’s conception of The Lord of the Rings was what he called the “eucatastrophe”: the sudden “turn” in which the darkest moment in the story turns to joy. For Tolkien, this moment is the scene in which Frodo wakes up in Gondor. And, in fact, it does work quite well in the film to continue past the climax at Mount Doom: the tension has come to a peak, and it has been released. As viewers, we can share the joy of the moment in which Frodo, incredulous, finds himself safe and surrounded by his friends. The remainder of the film is basically just tying up the last loose ends.

In the theatrical cut of The Return of the King, I felt that the film from this point to the end was very badly handled: it felt far too long, and the drag in the pacing really diminished the impact of the ending overall. Considering that the Extended Edition has exactly the same conclusion as the theatrical cut, I expected to have the same reaction… but I didn’t.

I do still think that the ending could have been made a little tighter, but it works significantly better in the Extended Edition than in the theatrical cut. One reason for that is simply context: the 20 minutes of final material is a smaller percentage of the overall film in the four-hour cut than it was in the three-hour cut, so it doesn’t feel too long in proportion to the whole film. Another reason is that the pacing of the ending material is slower than that of the theatrical cut, but it’s consistent with that of the Extended Edition, so it fits better here. Most importantly, though, I think the ending works better because the Extended Edition gives us more depth for the characters and more reason to care about them. When Frodo says goodbye to Merry and Pippin, he’s saying goodbye to genuine friends and companions in adventure, since we’ve seen much more how the two young hobbits were involved in the story. And the closing shot of Sam with his family has a lot more emotional power now that we’ve come to appreciate just how important Sam was to Frodo and to the Fellowship as a whole.

I’ve been mostly talking about character and story here, but the review wouldn’t be complete without a nod at just how fantastic The Return of the King looks: not just in terms of image quality on the DVD (we’ll get to that later) but in terms of how realistic and convincing the fantasy world of the film is. If we’re to fully engage with the film, it’s important that we believe in it while we’re watching, and The Return of the King excels in this department. Obviously, the amazing CGI has a lot to do with this: the fact that it’s possible to genuinely forget that Gollum is not real is simply astounding. But I suspect that the overall realistic feel of The Return of the King has a lot to do with Jackson not relying too heavily on CGI. There’s a lot of model and miniature work in this film, and I think we can see the benefits in the convincing texture and sense of solidity of the places, people, and things here.

The Extended Edition

When 50 extra minutes of material are added to a film that’s already more than three hours long, you have to ask: what effect is this going to have? Sometimes adding material to a long film just bloats it even more, but oddly enough, sometimes the extra running time makes the whole film pull together better overall.

In the case of The Return of the King, the extra material is undeniably a success, making an already good film significantly better. I liked the theatrical cut of The Return of the King, but it didn’t bowl me over; in contrast, the Extended Edition completely impressed me.

There are two kinds of new material here: extensions of existing scenes, and several totally new scenes.

Twenty-two separate scenes have added material, over the course of the entire film. For the most part, these additions give us a more personal glimpse of the characters and their reactions to the events going on around them. One story thread that benefits greatly from the extended material involves Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Here it’s clearer that he has fallen into madness in his grief and despair at Boromir’s death and the invasion of Gondor, and his final scene in the Tomb of the Stewards takes on a Shakespearean quality that’s quite effective. Aragorn’s journey through the Paths of the Dead also benefits from some additional material, with the Haunted Mountain sequence becoming even more chilling.

Fourteen completely new scenes are added as well. These range from substantial additions that add depth to the plot, to shorter segments that serve mainly to adjust the pacing of the film, providing a pause to take a breath between two highly-charged scenes. One of the best new scenes takes place early in the film, and shows us a confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman. It’s a compelling scene in its own right, and also provides a touch of dread for what’s to come later as Sauron attacks in force. A parallel scene late in the film, with Gandalf and the Witch King, is another great addition. The final action in Mordor is also enhanced by several new scenes: one with the “Mouth of Sauron” confronting Aragorn’s forces, and another with Frodo and Sam trying to cross the orc-filled plains of Mordor.

All in all, The Extended Edition of The Return of the King wins out over the theatrical cut: it’s a significantly better film in its longer cut, and it’s saying a lot for me to feel that way. I was afraid before I saw the Extended Edition that it would be too much of a good thing, but the longer cut really won me over. This is the superior version of the film.

Originally written for DVDTalk. Read the full review here.

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