- Oct 9, 1999
- 17,627
- 5
- 81
I won tickets to the Canadian premiere in Toronto tonight and here's my review copy/pasted from another forum:
---
"Well, I'm back."
What follows will be poorly written, so bear with me. I am also going to try and keep this spoiler FREE.
The Return of the King is ridiculous. My buddy and I had a discussion on the hour long car ride home about how can we possibly explain how good this movie was to everyone? Ridiculous is the word we came up with. Frankly because it shattered everything I thought was possible from not only this movie but movies in general. Ridiculously good. Movies almost don't have a right to be so well done.
I gasped in awe, I cheered, I laughed, and I cried like a baby. The final act of ROTK is emotionally exhuasting and exhilerating at the same time. The pace was almost perfect, the editing was so so so much smoother than TTT's editing.
Before I go on, many of you probably consider me to be a "fanboy" who would love anything that he saw, and you're right about one thing....I am a fanboy but I still have a critical eye towards it, no matter how much I gush on here I have huge problems with TTT and to a lesser extent FOTR.
With that said, Return of the King lives up to every bit of hype it had. To put it simply (and its been said before), take the emotional and character power of FOTR and the action and adventure of TTT and mold them together, and you have ROTK. That is indeed ROTK in a nutshell, but it goes so much further. On the emotional side, ROTK is genuinely moving. Moreso than FOTR. 10 fold. I was never brought to the point of real tears with either FOTR or TTT, but ROTK gets so intimate with the characters that you can't help yourself. The action side is mind boggling. That's all I will say. Helm's Deep is a walk in the park now by comparison. The Nazgul are TERRIFYING. You'll understand once you see it.
This movie is filled with epic wide shots. Remember those precious few shots in FOTR such as Gandalf riding up to Minas Tirith with Mordor in the background? Or Saruman on top of Isengard calling down the storm on Caradhras? There is so many in this movie and all of them are on a scale that dwarf anything we've previously seen. There is a very long, but beautiful sequence of the beacons of Gondor being lit that was truly amazing to watch. Speaking of visual orgasms, they really seemed to have perfected their colour grading skills this time around. The movie just flat out looked amazing. Every shot was gorgeous...the colors, the composition, the look of it all was just amazing. The fact that this was the best visual presentation I've seen of a movie EVER probably helped too. If there's such thing as calibrating a projector, they did it here. The detail was jaw-dropping. A pristine print. This is gonna be one good looking DVD. As for the red/brownish dots care of the MPAA, they are there though not distracting. I barely noticed them.
As for all the multiple endings people are talking about, they are NOT poorly done. In fact they are totally necessary. I think its only flaw was that they faded to black way too much.
Return of the King surpassed my expectations in ways I never thought possible. It made me tired....there was so much to take in. The 200 minutes flew by faster than any previous LOTR film. The sheer COOLNESS of it aside, the most important thing is that it made me completely satisfied. The wait was well worth it. I was watching movie history tonight.
5/5 stars
------------------
Needless to say I loved the film. If you have any questions I'll answer them tomorrow, but for now I must get some sleep. I am drained from this.
---
"Well, I'm back."
What follows will be poorly written, so bear with me. I am also going to try and keep this spoiler FREE.
The Return of the King is ridiculous. My buddy and I had a discussion on the hour long car ride home about how can we possibly explain how good this movie was to everyone? Ridiculous is the word we came up with. Frankly because it shattered everything I thought was possible from not only this movie but movies in general. Ridiculously good. Movies almost don't have a right to be so well done.
I gasped in awe, I cheered, I laughed, and I cried like a baby. The final act of ROTK is emotionally exhuasting and exhilerating at the same time. The pace was almost perfect, the editing was so so so much smoother than TTT's editing.
Before I go on, many of you probably consider me to be a "fanboy" who would love anything that he saw, and you're right about one thing....I am a fanboy but I still have a critical eye towards it, no matter how much I gush on here I have huge problems with TTT and to a lesser extent FOTR.
With that said, Return of the King lives up to every bit of hype it had. To put it simply (and its been said before), take the emotional and character power of FOTR and the action and adventure of TTT and mold them together, and you have ROTK. That is indeed ROTK in a nutshell, but it goes so much further. On the emotional side, ROTK is genuinely moving. Moreso than FOTR. 10 fold. I was never brought to the point of real tears with either FOTR or TTT, but ROTK gets so intimate with the characters that you can't help yourself. The action side is mind boggling. That's all I will say. Helm's Deep is a walk in the park now by comparison. The Nazgul are TERRIFYING. You'll understand once you see it.
This movie is filled with epic wide shots. Remember those precious few shots in FOTR such as Gandalf riding up to Minas Tirith with Mordor in the background? Or Saruman on top of Isengard calling down the storm on Caradhras? There is so many in this movie and all of them are on a scale that dwarf anything we've previously seen. There is a very long, but beautiful sequence of the beacons of Gondor being lit that was truly amazing to watch. Speaking of visual orgasms, they really seemed to have perfected their colour grading skills this time around. The movie just flat out looked amazing. Every shot was gorgeous...the colors, the composition, the look of it all was just amazing. The fact that this was the best visual presentation I've seen of a movie EVER probably helped too. If there's such thing as calibrating a projector, they did it here. The detail was jaw-dropping. A pristine print. This is gonna be one good looking DVD. As for the red/brownish dots care of the MPAA, they are there though not distracting. I barely noticed them.
As for all the multiple endings people are talking about, they are NOT poorly done. In fact they are totally necessary. I think its only flaw was that they faded to black way too much.
Return of the King surpassed my expectations in ways I never thought possible. It made me tired....there was so much to take in. The 200 minutes flew by faster than any previous LOTR film. The sheer COOLNESS of it aside, the most important thing is that it made me completely satisfied. The wait was well worth it. I was watching movie history tonight.
5/5 stars
------------------
Needless to say I loved the film. If you have any questions I'll answer them tomorrow, but for now I must get some sleep. I am drained from this.
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