News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Thursday, July 28, 2011

BD impressions: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)

3:12 PM / BD Impressions / 6 Comments

The film: THE RETURN OF THE KING is a somewhat frustrating film for me, arguably more so than either of the previous instalments in Peter Jackson's trilogy. It remains the only instalment for which the extended material is really a "make or break" situation: the theatrical version is missing two scenes so crucial to the entire trilogy that I honestly consider it a woefully inferior version in that form. Even with these vital scenes restored, however, the film leaves something to be desired as an adaptation of Tolkien's novel, skipping or glossing over important elements while expanding or inventing others which slow things down and distract from the main narrative.

As I mentioned in my review of THE TWO TOWERS, that film only covered just over half of the book, meaning that come ROTK Jackson and his writers have a great deal of ground still left to cover: the confrontation with Saruman and Pippin's escapade with the palantír, Gandalf and Pippin's flight to Minas Tirith, Frodo and Sam's passage through Cirith Ungol and encounter with Shelob, and of course Frodo's capture by orcs after Sam, leaving him for dead, makes off with the Ring. It's somewhat surprising, then, that ROTK immediately throws a whole lot of invented and/or redundant material at us, including a flashback showing the corruption of Gollum (originally intended for TTT at the point when Gollum's Sméagol personality re-emerged - a far better fit for the material, in my opinion), lengthy scenes of celebration at Edoras and an ill-judged sequence in which Frodo, contrary to the novel, sends Sam packing and Sam, contrary to everything we know about his character, acquiesces. These additions are problematic enough before you even consider that, in the theatrical version, they come at the expense of one of the most important scenes in the entire trilogy: the confrontation at Orthanc at which Gandalf breaks Saruman's staff and casts him from their Order. I've harped on about this before but it bears mentioning again: to remove the demise of the second film's main villain (and the true on-screen "Big Bad" given that in the novel Sauron is never seen in physical form and in the film is rendered only as a giant floating eye), putting the matter to bed with some cursory line about him no longer being a threat, strikes me as madness incarnate, and I would argue that the reinstating of this scene near the beginning of the extended edition goes a long way towards making up for the flaws of the theatrical cut. I'd go as far as to say that it, plus the restoration of the confrontation with the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate (which completely alters the tone and purpose of the final desperate battle against the forces of Mordor), turn what was merely a good film into a great one.

There are plenty of other flaws, to be sure. Poor old Gimli is there as little more than comic relief; the nonsense involving Arwen's life inexplicably becoming tied to the fate of the Ring is nigh on incomprehensible and drags the pacing down; the loss of the Scouring of the Shire, while understandable, does leave the hobbits' character journeys feeling unfinished (given that it's the point at which they truly rise to the occasion and settle their own affairs without the need of elves, rangers or wizards to aid them). As for the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN-style depiction of the Oathbreakers, not to mention the decision to have them show up at Minas Tirith and save the day in a flood of what I once saw described as "green mouthwash" - the less said the better. And in terms of the additions in the extended version, I'm not a fan of the cheesetastic "You and what army?" "This one!" exchange between Aragorn and the corsairs or Frodo and Sam's encounter with a band of orcs in Mordor, which descends into a mood-breaking slapstick farce. Nor am I particularly fond of Gandalf's encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl, an iconic moment in the book (and, for what it's worth, Tolkien's favourite scene) that loses much of its grandeur when it turns into a scene in which Gandalf falls off his horse and Pippin does a lot of screaming...

...but there's so much else going on that's so good that the positives do outweigh the negatives. I remain unconvinced by Elijah Wood's portrayal of Frodo (his idea of showing Frodo's inner pain seems to be to speak... really... slowly), but the character's physical and mental decline is handled very well here, and Sean Astin's Sam is, as throughout the rest of the trilogy, excellent. Merry and Pippin finally get to rise above their goofy comic relief roles (the juxtaposition of Pippin's singing and Denethor's less than civilised table manners with Faramir and his men riding to certain death is, while heavy-handed, quietly chilling), and Éowyn's defeat of the Lord of the Nazgûl provides one of the trilogy's few "fist in the air" triumph moments. I'm not sure I'd agree with the general consensus that it's the best of the trilogy: compared with THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, it does feel a little bloated and lackadaisically plotted, with a handful of plot holes that continue to niggle. (How on earth does Elrond reach Dunharrow from Rivendell so quickly? Why are we given so many hints as to Denethor's apparent "second sight" but then never shown that he too possesses a palantír? Why is the notion that Sauron believes Pippin has the Ring brought up and then never followed through?) Ultimately, though, there are very few movies of this length (more than four hours in its extended form) that I can sit through without becoming bored. It's ambitious, gripping, somewhat flawed and in places a bit shambolic, but taken as a whole Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is probably as good a rendition of a supposedly "unfilmable" book as could have been hoped for. I doubt I'll ever be able to watch it without thinking "I wish X had been included" or "I wish Y had been left out" or "I wish Z was more like it was in the book", but such is always the fate of adaptations when you have a particularly strong attachment to the source material. I'll probably always prefer the 1981 BBC radio adaptation, but for all its myriad flaws, this is really, really good. 8/10

Image quality: ROTK is, by a comfortable margin, the best-looking instalment of the trilogy on BD, lacking both the green tint of FOTR and much of the noticeable processing that afflicted TTT. Detail, edge enhancement (or lack thereof) and overall film-like texture continue to vary from shot to shot (and even between different elements within the same shot), but a greater degree of consistency is achieved than in the two previous films and, when it's at its best, the film looks as good as the best-looking DI-sourced titles I've seen from the early/mid 2000s. Detail, particularly in facial close-ups, is often striking (see Example 28 and Example 65), and wide shots generally fare well too - almost too well, as the computer generated nature of the crowd scenes is at times noticeable (see Example 42). Certain scenes to take on a somewhat harsh, processed look, with the Minas Tirith exteriors seeming to be especially affected (see Example 33), but generally speaking this is the most natural-looking of the bunch. Certain shots do look a little underwhelming (this one of Théoden is reminiscent of a Universal catalogue release!), but they are few and far between and, as with the BDs of the other two films, are probably the result of issues with the DI itself rather than meddling at the BD stage.

As with the previous two films, this release marks a significant improvement over the theatrical BD in terms of the comparative lack of digital processing artefacts (again I direct you to BluBrew's comparison). Grain reduction is apparent in certain shots (it's not apparent in the capture, but the close-up shots of Sam on the slopes of Orodruin when he asks Frodo if he remembers the Shire show clear "sluggishness" and freezing in the grain), but again I'm inclined to believe that this is simply an accurate representation of what the master looks like. In the final assessment, while it falls short of "reference" quality, ROTK has received a satisfying presentation - one with minor niggles rather than major flaws. Recommended.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)
label: Warner/New Line; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Note: In an attempt to save disk space and also provide readers with a greater number of shots, I'm currently trialling uploading captures to free image hosting sites rather than my own web space. Images should take longer to load, but in my opinion the benefits should outweigh the negatives. Any thoughts? Let me know.

6 Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at m.r.mackenzie[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.