Craptastic TV

I did not see Return of the King in the theater, I did see Fellowship of the Ring the first day however. I HATED it, I was so disappointed, I loved the actors that portrayed the characters, they looked pretty much how I always imagined them. I adored the Shire and the way it looked, all of the stills looked so good, until I saw the movie.

I loved the books so obviously I would be hard to please if anything was changed, kind of. I understand that it is not really possible to do everything to make everyone happy and I was fine with changing things around a little. Where I draw the line is when things are taken out and things are added that are pointless to the main story.

So it has to be obvious that I will not like Return of the King, guess what, you are correct. The last 2 movies I just watched on DVD, of the three, oddly I liked The Two Towers the best, weird.

Last Sunday night I was flipping around looking for anything to watch and TNT was doing their Tolkien marathon or something like that. I guess they lost the exclusive rights to Beastmaster.

It was very late in the movie, or else I would have kept flipping. Frodo had just lost the ring and Sam was talking him out of taking a magma swim.

As I was trying to like what I was seeing I just kept thinking how incredibly fake it all looked. The whole lava and Mount Doom thing was pathetic looking, I giggled when the eagles came down and got Frodo.

Case and point of adding and subtracting, in the book it was a great moment when Sauron realized he was in trouble and turned all his will to Mount Doom and his armies faltered, then Gandalf announced that everything was hanging by a thread. Great moment in the book, does the movie do that, nooooo, instead you just see silly cut scenes of the fellowship jumping around, lame.

It seemed the last 20 minutes of the movie was just one long lame voice over by Frodo. Who sounded like Linda Hunt as Billy in Year of Living Dangerously and everyone standing around smiling and laughing, well I certainly was not laughing or even slightly smiling.

Also you would think with all the money they spent they could have had better lighting during the coronation it looked like a prom photo booth, absurd!

Same for when Bilbo shows up, his aged makeup looked so outrageous I could see why they lit the scene like that. It hides the Big Lots latex kit someone used on Ian Holmes.

They could have done so much more with the ending, as a rule I hate movies that end with everyone standing around smiling at each other. Then, just to kick you when you are already down, Cate Blanchett says some line (forget what it was) when they are leaving on the ship that is so wooden, so silly, so self-important that I was astounded. Ever see Wilt Chamberlan in the Conan movie when he says "Thieves should be hanged", well this was even more woodenly said than that. I gave Wilt a freepass, he was a basketball player, not an actor. Cate, what is your excuse?

Anyway, I really hated this movie, seeing the last bit just made me remember how much.

Note to Peter Jackson and Benicio Del Torro in regard to the Hobbit, please don’t screw it up. It is a great story, no need to add any romance, fake tension or anything else like that. There is a reason no one has made an Oreo Cookie "New & Improved" they are pretty much perfect they way they are. Do you remember a thing called "New Coke", try pretty please not to make "The Hobbit" with new and improved characters.