Word: tolkien
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Well, it's back. The film event of the millennium--three superb films re-creating J.R.R. Tolkien's epic series of novels--reaches its climax with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. For the third December in a row, the year is capped with a robust cinematic retelling of the war of Middle-earth, as the hobbit Frodo (Wood) and his fellowship of humans, elves, dwarfs and the wizard Gandalf (McKellen) surge into battle against the dark power of Mordor's Lord Sauron...
...story is the hunky human warrior Aragorn (Mortensen). But Jackson is the true lord of these Rings. The New Zealand auteur spent seven years on the trilogy, collaborating on the scripts with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. He chose and directed this perfect cast, orchestrated the smashing visual effects--Tolkien's bestiary on the march in fantastical realms. In Return, the giant trolls, four-tusked elephants and flying, screeching serpents of Mordor will amaze adults and may startle small children. The spider monster Shelob, creeping up on Frodo and mummifying him in a silken straitjacket, offers a delicious horror-movie...
...Maybe trilogies only work for Tolkien. Though it remains visually stylish and features several excellent performances from some of Hong Kong's most versatile stars, IA3 sags under a load of familiar third-act baggage. Too little story spread over too much movie? Check. Total narrative bafflement for those who haven't dissected the first two films? Check. An unshakable sense of fatigue for the directors and audience alike? Double check. Even without the furry merchandising gimmicks, IA3 is more Return of the Jedi than Return of the King...
...Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And heading the cast is a tony quartet of hunks: Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana (who somehow survived the wreck of The Hulk) as Hector, Sean Bean (Boromir in The Lord of the Rings) as Odysseus and Orlando Bloom (who was Tolkien's elf lord Legolas and Johnny Depp's young foil in Pirates of the Caribbean) as that thieving scamp Paris. And in the role of Priam, King of Troy, is Peter O'Toole, 40 years and more after incarnating the movies' great idealist lost in war, Lawrence of Arabia...
...case anybody cares, yes, Draco Malfoy is still a cardboard villain who talks as if he's twiddling his mustachio. Yes, the Sorting Hat sings another embarrassingly lame song (Rowling, who has learned so much from Tolkien, should have learned to stay away from poetry). But Rowling does so much right that it's churlish to dwell on her minor missteps. (O.K., one more: Dobby still talks like Jar Jar Binks.) She has shed the clumsy devices--the impostors and the secret identities--that marred the shape of some of the earlier books. Her prose, always a serviceable, unshowy instrument...