Thoughts on Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Okay, we know you've seen Lord of the Rings: Return of the King already, maybe as part of the marathon showing. Gothamist wants to know what you think. And if you haven't seen it yet (gasp!), before or after you watch the movie in Times Square, you can go to the Times Square Toys R Us where they have some of the props from the film on display. [Via Neil]

Gothamist is not making any comparisons, but check out Triumph pooping on Stars Wars nerds before seeing SW: Attack of the Clones.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Arts and Events on December 17, 2003 9:32 AM

Comments [rss]

Knott

3rd movie was way too long,I've almost slept over the last hour.

Knott

3rd movie was way too long,I've almost slept over the last hour.

ALEX

I thought the third one was reallt good....My favorite part was when .... actually I had alot of favorite parts. Well anyways, My favorite of the three is..... ummmmm......let me think.......either the second one or the third one......( no efence to the first one...I just thought it was alittle boring .......except for when they went on the adventure and kicked orc butt). I like the 3rd one the best because Shelob stabbs Frodo and Frodo believes Gollum.....and ditches Sam.....I thought that was funny......:)

Adrian

Hmmm. I was a little disappointed. Some fantastic scenes, but it did feel a little too homoerotic and chessy in many of the final scenes. Shelob was amazing.

Chris

Gee, you guys are really harsh. I admit the last half was weaker than the first half, but the first half was amazing. My friends and I agreed that the first half is quite possibly among the best war movies ever. And unlike the Two Towers, it sticks pretty close to the book; I was quite upset the first time I saw FOTR and TTT, and I really loved ROTK. Two changes, one of which didn't bother me in the slightest, and one minor change, which I thought actually improved on Tolkien's concept.

I saw it on the 17th, and the energy and audience was great. There was tons of applause and cheering (and "You go, Sam!"s).

Fredrik

Never in my life I'm sitting through another three hours straight for mutilation of a perfectly good book. Return of the King is straight-to-DvD for move so I'm not even going to the movies this time. If I'm bothering about it at all, that is. Personally the Matrix thrilogy made better movies. LOTR was originally intended to be a travelling guide to Middle Earth, fun movie that would have made, eh?

br

I saw it last night at the Chelsea Clearview and there was a near-riot when the projectionist, dumb f*ck that he is, skipped an entire reel. One minute Gandalf et al are planning a distraction and then jump cut to Frodo about to destroy the ring. Everyone was hootin' and hollerin' and about a third of the audience walked out, ready to lynch the guy. They had to give everyone free tickets to another screening, plus reran the film again at 4 am. Totally killed it for everyone.

Radagast the Brown

I'm only going to see it if they can promise me three hours of appendices detailing the lineage of each character.

spygeek

Even though I fell down half a flight of stairs and sprained my ankle on the way to the movie theater last night, I enjoyed it. I really wish they hadn't cut Saruman - there should have been more to the scene at Isengard at the beginning, and I think they could have cut 5 seconds off each fight scene to accomodate it.

Ben

Return of the king was good, but also i think the weakest of the trilogy. In contrast to how i felt about the first two, i felt the last 1/2 hr's pacing was off (felt dragged out0. I thought the NYT's description of the effect of the ending was over-generous.

Lots of scenes that looked designed to be rousing audience-crowd pleasers didn't evoke much cheers and applause, which you would think would be the case for an opening night crowd willing to show up at 12:01am. Or maybe we were just all too tired, or hot (the theatre got very warm by the end, which made it difficult to enjoy the film). Or maybe it's the folks who show up at 12:01am on opening who are hardest to please.

I will probably see it again to see if i was just too tired to appreciate it at midnight, and hopefully the theatre won't be melting us down next time.

greg.org

OMG. Yesterday morning I walked out of my apt in DC and into a swarm of elfin folke, who, it turned out, were in line for Trilogy Tuesday. I estimated 20% of the 300 or so people were in LOTR drag.

Needless to say, I hightailed it back to NYC where that sort of thing would never happen. Right? um...

Steve O

Lord of the Rings was great. I loved the part when he stuck the Matchbox car in his ass and then went to the doctor ... man that was funny.

jake

who did you hear that from? b/c i've not heard anthing on the drum this week re: choire/gawker.

Gilgamesh

Lets try and turn this into the success that the Matrix post was. I want 500 posts by New Years. Whose in? I hear Cory over at Gawker is leaving to go build Timeout NY's blog.