They have giant elephants and swooping pterodactyls. They are even more extravagant than his jaw-dropping siege of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers. Hours after watching the film, I can close my eyes and see those incredible battle scenes pulsing and throbbing in my skull. Without Saruman, it's not good versus evil. Saruman gone! Could it be that Peter Jackson decided that what with all the expensive battle scenes, there wasn't time? He could have cut half the shots of Elijah Wood's Frodo doing his bug-eyed, smudgy-faced worried expression, and freed up about 20 minutes. Lee was one of only two really good acting performances in the series, among all the simpering maidens and beefcakes and callow hobbits, the other being Ian McKellen's splendid Gandalf. I don't know how that plays with the Tolkie purists, but I'm disappointed. Because Jackson has cut Saruman out of Return of the King: the evil lord so brilliantly conveyed by Christopher Lee. But imagine if Milton had decided to cut Satan out of Paradise Lost. It is another triumph for production designer Grant Major and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie.īut does it deserve those excitable claims of greatness? A moral exposition of good versus evil? After The Two Towers, I heard normally sensible critics jabbering the word "Miltonic". Technically it really is superb, with breathtaking landscape tableaux and settings, seamlessly meshing cyber-geography with the New Zealand locations.
In Jackson, the Tolkien legend found the perfectly sympathetic director to realise its Arthuro-Nordic saga, and in Lord of the Rings, the computer-generated image technology found the perfect medium for the stunning new effects now possible. Was it really only two years ago that Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings started? This giant movie marathon has dominated everyone's attention and its reputation has grown exponentially while other event-movie franchises have floundered.
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