The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
dir. Peter Jackson
New Line Cinema

After more than a year of fretting, The Return of the King has given us what we've been so desperately waiting for: a film that makes us feel good about killing elephants.

Sure, the elephants are called "mumakil," have more than two tusks, and are ridden by crazed archers, but there's no doubt about it: They've sided with the armies of Sauron, and they're going dooooooown.

The fall of the mumakil — a lively part of an elaborate, gorgeous, exhausting battle sequence — is deliciously old-school and viscerally thrilling, like much of the rest of this movie. A skull-splitting throwback to the days of yore when men slew monsters and rode in undulating waves of armored fury across infinite plains, The Return of the King is big. Hemingway big. Big League Chew big. Industrial Revolution big. Return of the King sweats more emotion, action and visual grandeur in 15 minutes than a half-dozen Matrix Reloadeds played end-to-end.

So broad, so universal and so intense is this film that you may weep at any of its many dramatic pinnacles. You'll forget that it ends seven damned times. You'll forget the rambling opening, in which storm clouds sleepily gather for the length of a normal full-length feature. You'll forget the hambone goofy stutter steps and the "grab my hand and I'll pull you up the cliff!" clichés that stud its giant girth.

You'll forget its flaws — and if you pick it apart from any of about a half-dozen different perspectives, there are flaws aplenty — because the movie does what so few contrived, timid, focus-grouped pieces of celluloid do these days. It transports you.

Completely.

By swinging expertly from the micro of a scared hobbit dropping behind a rock to the macro of 10,000 orcish shock troops pouring across a blackened landscape, the film is visually arresting on a scale that simultaneously boggles and fascinates.

And by attaching emotional significance to everything on the screen, it ensures you never tune out. The city of Minas Tirith is not just another placename. It's the place where Aragorn must return to reclaim his throne. Where Faramir decides to undertake his suicidal charge. Where Gandalf has rode in haste up an alabaster nautiloid path, from the plains to the summit of a rocky citadel. Where women and old men have thrown flowers in the path of horsemen departing for near-certain destruction against a seemingly inexhaustible foe.

If Minas Tirith falls, and its inhabitants are slaughtered, or Frodo fails in his charge to deliver the One Ring to the molten center of Mount Doom, or Samwise falls victim to one of the several dozen potentially lethal challenges on the quest — we care. Peter Jackson has built a film where nothing exists in a vacuum; every action has repercussions, every conversation changes or reinforces relationships and every battle is fought for a clear purpose. Life and death mean something in Jackson's Middle Earth, and that's a good thing; it's the opposite of Hollywood action-movie nihilism, where we can shrug nonchalantly as jetliners explode and crazed robots mow down human victims by the hundreds.

And for all its sloppy moments, Return of the King does a lot of things better than its predecessors. Its use of Gimli the dwarf as comic relief is both more sparing and more accurate. The relationships between the members of the fellowship feel taut, and tested by time. The stakes are higher, building on each of the previous films' climaxes and doubling again the importance of the action without feeling like a mere gimmick. It feels as it should: the end of a long quest in the company of boon companions at the end of an age.

It's huge, it's majestic, and, for all of its grand scope, it's a film that will reach out and grab you. If you've got friends you care about, or fears about the future, or a hometown you love, or a cause you believe in, you'd better believe Return of the King will wring real empathy from your benumbed, pop culture-clouded heart. Cynics may scoff; encyclopedic Tolkien nerds may quibble; amateur film editors may object. To hell with them. Grab your popcorn. Prepare to be trampled.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)