Saw the last hobbit movie: it was precisely par for Peter Jackson's course. Today's entries are full of what we dorks call spoilers: as in, if you do want your RotK viewing spoiled by precognition, stop reading.
RotK kind of confirms the rule I was always afraid would be proven by Lucas's Episode III: there are no enormous narrative twists that justifies earlier narrative flaws. What you have seen in the first two movies is what your going to get in the third. The people that made the first two films thought they were just dandy, and they have no interest in "salvaging" anything with the third.
My biggest complaint is the one I went off about about (incoherently, and at length) a week ago: very little feels new. I've seen almost all of this at the movies before.
Now add to that Middle Earth never felt terribly imperiled. In the first movie, we had a couple Urukai chasing the fellowship. Good fights and all, but not exactly epic.
But then Jackson said TT was "a story, basically, of genocide." Didn't happen. The torch wielding Orcs rolled into town, the village denizens started screaming... and, scene. No great Conan The Barbarian moments where the town is sacked and heads are stuck on pikes. But the battle of Helms Deep at the end was good stuff.
And just you wait, said Jackson. The last battle in RotK will make Helms Deep look like the Sharks vs. the Jets. Alas, no. Pretty much the same battle, with a catapault duel tacked on to the beginning and a rabid elephant charge tacked on to the end. And this one took place during the daytime, where CGI flaws are a lot harder to ignore.
But, all that out of the way--wait, one more thing: Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee were pretty much no-shows. I think the audience was pretty clearly lead to believe that these two would be jumping back into the thick of things before the end.
Okay, now really: all that out of the way, heck of a good movie. The spider was a wonderfully honest-to-goodness monstrosity. Pippin and Mary finally seemed like real fleshed out characters, and the whole movie gained buoyancy because of them. And the ghost army: a great Tolkien idea that hasn't been co-opted by Lucas et al. So it seemed hugely original. The idea of a returning king bringing pride and purpose back to some cursed tribes of men, a metaphor for reinvigorating old forgotten people and ideas: holy toilet seat, that's good storytelling.
As was the ship's departure at the end, with (S-P-O-I-L-E-R, MAN!) Frodo aboard. I've been bored with some of the long expository scenes between battles in all three films, but this fifteen minute epilogue was was positively elegiac. And despite my best hopes, I don't think I'll ever be able to use that word about Episode III. Or probable any other movie I'll see for a number of years. Ten dollars well spent.
