The Return of the Numb-Ass-In-A-Theater-Seat
The final installment in the Lord of the Rings series is out now... I'll see it on Thursday. After reading Harry Knowles' review (in which he compares the trilogy favorably to Hiroshi Inagaki's 'Samurai' series with Toshiro Mifune, Coppola's 'Godfather' trilogy, Lucas' 'Star Wars', and David Lean's not-a-trilogy-but-still-three-damn-fine-films-in-a-row 'Bridge on the River Kwai', 'Lawrence of Arabia', and 'Dr Zhivago'), I thought I'd see if there were any reviews that were longer on criticism and shorter on adoration. So of course I went over to Rotten Tomatoes, to see what the critics there thought. (No spoilers below.)
The current standing is 102 positive ratings and 3 negative, with an overall rating of 9.3 out of 10. Now, it takes guts (or stupidity... the two are remarkably similar in appearance most of the time) to slam RotK when you just *know* people are going to be fawning over it, so I read the three negative reviews carefully. What I found there was quite interesting:
The positive reviews all contain caveats about just about every little scene that was cut from the books (or added to them). It's a pretty tough crowd to please; people who will damn near memorize a 1200-page book or study multiple non-existent languages feel a pretty strong connection to the subject matter. But all in all, the reports are very good.
This pleases me. I don't think I could handle another pile of shite like Matrix:Revolutions; as far as I am concerned, The Matrix was one film, and there were two other films that take place in the same setting but have little thematic continuity with the first. 'We envisioned The Matrix as a trilogy from the very beginning' my ass. If that was true, why the fuck did they leave every fucking plot line hanging, only to pursue newer, stranger, more irrelevant subplots?
With 'Star Wars' pretty much fucked, and 'The Matrix' fucked proper, it's up to Jackson to keep it real with the Return of the King. If he fucks this one up, I'm not going to anymore movies. But since the only real complaints about the film come from people who haven't read the book (wtf?), I don't think there's much of a risk there. I'll let you know on Thursday.
The current standing is 102 positive ratings and 3 negative, with an overall rating of 9.3 out of 10. Now, it takes guts (or stupidity... the two are remarkably similar in appearance most of the time) to slam RotK when you just *know* people are going to be fawning over it, so I read the three negative reviews carefully. What I found there was quite interesting:
Stephen Whitty:
...these new multi-part epics invariably disappoint, either assuming we know all the background by heart, or going off on tangents that interest no one but the eventual "director's cut" devotee...
...Jackson's movie doesn't ignore other races, or patronize them. It casts them as villains. Why is it, otherwise, that our heroes' latest enemies are said, ominously, to come "from the South," and enter riding elephants and wearing burnooses?
...Elijah Wood and Sean Astin manage to evade both the dangers of their quest and any hints of homoeroticism in their loving friendship as Frodo and Sam...
David Elliott:
...why the endless padding of "heroic" suspense? Jackson really thinks we needed such touches as the episode with a huge spider worthy of a '50s monster film (reputedly he's an arachnophobe)...
... Why is hero Frodo (Elijah Wood) often so wan and floppy, as if in need of smelling salts? Why is he so slow to notice that creepy mini-nudist Gollum is no friend? And his pal Sam (Sean Astin) calling him "Mr. Frodo" starts to seem like a joke...
...perhaps pinched by feminism, Jackson lets fair Eowyn (Miranda Otto) flail a sword and hack off a monster's head...
Michelle Alexandria:
As someone who has never read the books...
...I simply never bought into the basic premise of the film, that somehow this little "Gold Ring" was the "embodiment" of all evil in middle earth and if you destroy it; all will be good and right with the world...
The positive reviews all contain caveats about just about every little scene that was cut from the books (or added to them). It's a pretty tough crowd to please; people who will damn near memorize a 1200-page book or study multiple non-existent languages feel a pretty strong connection to the subject matter. But all in all, the reports are very good.
This pleases me. I don't think I could handle another pile of shite like Matrix:Revolutions; as far as I am concerned, The Matrix was one film, and there were two other films that take place in the same setting but have little thematic continuity with the first. 'We envisioned The Matrix as a trilogy from the very beginning' my ass. If that was true, why the fuck did they leave every fucking plot line hanging, only to pursue newer, stranger, more irrelevant subplots?
With 'Star Wars' pretty much fucked, and 'The Matrix' fucked proper, it's up to Jackson to keep it real with the Return of the King. If he fucks this one up, I'm not going to anymore movies. But since the only real complaints about the film come from people who haven't read the book (wtf?), I don't think there's much of a risk there. I'll let you know on Thursday.
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