Hey folks, Harry here... Soon it will be the time for all of us to see RETURN OF THE KING, personally... I choose to see it with friends, the same way I've chosen to see FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING and THE TWO TOWERS. That's what these films are most about for me, about friendship and fellowship. No earthly power could get me to see this film without my closest friends. The test of that friendship is the ability to see it without your friends and turning that possiblity down, to hold the experience till it ripens with those you most wish to share it with. This review, for some reason reminded me of that. I can't wait to see this, for the first time, with those that I'll see it with... each awaiting each new image with an earnest "Gosh, Gee and Whiz" It will be something... special!
I went to see The Return of the King tonight and it had an effect on me. It made my coffee taste better.
I loved Fellowship, but it didn’t add up to the book. I loved The Two Towers, and it tied the book. But Return of the King is a genuine improvement on the original book. Not that Jackson added things that rivaled the genius of Tolkien, but he went through the book with a highlighter and streamlined the epic so that the emotions come through clearer and it hit me over the head like a Dwarven hammer.
Return has a brilliant way of contrasting innocence and beauty with overt power and truly ugly acts. The theme is set up with a beautiful documentation of Smeagol’s brutal journey beginning with a fishing trip with Deagol. Jackson sets up this premise with simple whimsical country folk who go from fishing on a lush pond to brutal murder.
But unlike other movies that house awful brutality, Return contextualizes it in a way that makes it in no way gratuitous. I contrast this film with steaming turds of post-modernity like Kill Bill and Matrix Revolutions. All three films are loaded with battles, heroes and darkness, but Return gives them something real to fight for friendship, family and the meek who confound the intelligent elite who corner the market on overt power. All of my movie-lovin’ friends drooled over Kill Bill, and Return will embarrass anyone who attributed any post Pulp Fiction greatness to Tarantino. The curtain of Matrix Revolutions is pulled back and we find out that Neo may not even exist. Spoon-bending and questioning reality is not the things heroes are made of.
Folks, we are in trouble. We have been blinded by low craftsmanship, low expectations and the ultimate dumbing down of the audience that the studios more than willingly are happy to underestimate. But Return could only be made by a 20th century devout Catholic who devoured Latin, Norse mythology, participated in WW1 and watched the horror of WW2 unfold before his eyes. Don’t look for moral-relativism in Return, it ain’t there. We see “good” men try to negotiate, understand or bargain with evil, and they are crushed and despised even more than the Orcs who may not have had a choice in the matter.
I can’t describe the joy of watching a Hobbit and his gardener dismantle the arrogant evil of their times. Sam, Frodo, Pippin, Merry, Eowyn and Strider the hippy turned King are the heroes of this story. These are all types of good people who do not live up to their potential and must go through the fires of Mordor before they are refined into humble but even more powerful warriors capable of destroying that which is seemingly impossible to destroy.
As a content creator in Hollywood, it was a joy to turn around and see the rest of the audience watching the screen WITH THEIR JAWS DROPPED OPEN I see Kill Bill and Revolutions and I say, “I could do that sitting on the toilet.”. . I saw Return of the King tonight and I was utterly humiliated. Hollywood’s been caught with their pants down. All I can say is wait til’ you see The Passion.
After I saw Kill Bill, I had to take a shower. I poured myself a cup of coffee and it tasted worse. I can’t explain it, but after seeing Uma prostituted out while in a coma I couldn’t just enjoy my popcorn and dismiss this fecal matter as a comic book. Thank God Return came along at just the right time… a time that is hopefully, “The turning of the tide.”
I’m Dr. Ong
