[8.6/10] The power of friendship is a cliché. Every other movie has their hero overcoming adversity, and probably the bad guy, through the bonds they’ve forged with their crew of allies and confidantes. It’s a good message; it just becomes tiresome after a while. But *The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King* makes that trite sentiment feel legitimate and moving again. It is a story about the power of friendship, whose crux centers less on the defeat of the great evil, or the grand triumph in battle, than on the hardship-tested love between two hobbits who literally and figuratively support one another when things seem their bleakest.
I mean “love” in every sense. The film takes care to show that, no, despite how many times Samwise gazes longingly into Frodo’s eyes, he likes girls, so don’t you dare get the wrong idea, mainstream film audiences! But however much the movie cares to sweep it under the rug, there is genuine affection between Frodo and Sam, one that makes Sam’s dismissal heartbreaking, his return stirring, and their mutual farewell poignant but blissful in its own way. Yes, by the end of the film, the big scary eye is extinguished, and the pockmarked black armies are sent into the rubble of the earth. But more importantly, the fellowship between these two unlikely heroes withstands the worst that Middle Earth could throw at them, and then some.
And yet despite that small scale story (albeit with the biggest of backdrops) *Return of the King* practically defines cinematic epicness. As in the first two movies of the trilogy, even when the story starts to wobble, the sheer aesthetic glory of each frame keeps the viewer engrossed in the proceedings. Sauron’s black army of the monstrous and deformed strikes fear into the heart of the Fellowship and the audience. The white alabaster castles jutting into the sky, and ash-flaked canyons where our heroes crawl and cower lend themselves to the elemental sense of the struggle. And the golden hues of Frodo’s recovery and departure convey the tone of relief and catharsis and joy after so much ventured and nearly lost.
Of course, much of the skill in special effects and production design goes toward the grand spectacle that is the film’s raging battle. Director Peter Jackson achieves a sense of scale in the skirmish nearly unmatched by any other committed to screen. The lumbering trolls who smash and ready and fall, the opposing aerial assaults of flying rocks and zipping arrows, the close quarters combat of panicked knights and blood-thirsty monsters, and the skyward clashes between scaly reptiles and winged birds all keep the heart racing and the blood pumping through the showpiece battle of the entire trilogy.
At the same time, Jackson and company take care not to let the fight descend into spectacle alone. If nothing else, *Return* maintains a good flow of battle, with each side gaining the upper hand and seeing it slip away in turn. The confrontation comes with three separate “the cavalry has arrived” moments -- Theoden and the warriors of Rohan, Aragorn and the army of the dead, and the aforementioned giant eagles -- and yet each of them is rousing in its own way. And the personal stakes of Gandalf and Pippin rescuing Faramir from his deranged father, and Eowyn defending her father from the Witch King, help ground the massive battle in something more individual amid the tumult and triumphs.
Of course, much of that success comes down to the performers. There are a number of action movie one-liners, grandiose statements about hope and survival, dying words and purple prose ruminations on what’s at stake in *Return*. And yet, when they’re delivered amid the swell of Howard Shore’s incredible score, spoken with the gravitas and sincerity delivered by the cast’s stellar array of players, and especially, imbued with that little extra twinkle in the eye that only Ian McKellan can provide, they pierce your (read: my) cynical core nonetheless.
The film needs that glue to hold it together given how spread apart and jumbled up much of its plot and declaration is. Despite having made it past the character introductions, and streamlined the various story threads into what is, more or less, one final, all-encompassing conflict, *Return* still finds itself jumping from place to place, dropping lore like a never-before-mentioned horde of undead warriors out of nowhere, and slipping in exposition wherever it can to try to tie things up where needed. With that, Aragorn’s ascendancy to the monarchy feels perfunctory, a trope-mandated inevitability that lacks the same depth of feeling or character as the reciprocal journey to Mt. Doom.
Despite that, the morality play and test of friendship that completes the journey through Mordor more than makes up for it. While the reunion of Sam and Frodo seems as inevitable as Aragorn reclaiming the throne, there’s more weight to it, both because of the wounded performances that Sean Astin and Elijah Wood deliver, but also because of the sense that Frodo is being corrupted here, torn away from the thing that has kept him stable and centered and able to persevere in this immense struggle for so long. *Return* capitalizes on the dramatic irony of the audience knowing Gollum’s plans while Frodo doesn't, to make the dissolution of their pairing one of tragedy.
But it’s the difference between Frodo and Gollum that ends up making the difference, for them and for the whole of Middle Earth. The film opens with Smeagol succumbing to the influence of the ring, giving Andy Serkis a chance to show his chops without mocap, but also showing what’s at stake, how even the strongest of friendships can fall to the wayside under the dark power of this bewitched article.
It ends, however, with an affirmation of the friendship that withstood. The most stirring scene in *Return of the King* is not Sauron’s tower crumbling to the ground, or the ring sinking into magma, or the victory of the villainous hordes. It’s Sam carrying his exhausted, depleted friend on his back to the point of no return. It leads to the same sort of irony, that ultimately Frodo does succumb to the ring’s wiles, but that Gollum’s pitiful avarice ends his burden (and dooms the poor, wretched creature in the process), while Sam has taken him to where he needs to be. It is that bond that led them here and that bond that saved the world.
The final cinematic chapter in *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy is much like its predecessors. It aims high, wows its audience with daring spectacle, and soothes them with heartfelt performances. It also stumbles through the thicket of lore and plot points, races to keep the audience up to speed with the tangled events, and can’t quite figure out when and where to wrap things up.
But *Return of the King* elevates itself above the first two chapters through that old cliché, made new and vital once more. Of all things, this fantasy epic -- steeped in the vanquishing of evil and the farewell too old magic and the dawning dominion of men -- turns out to be a love story. Read that love however you want, but it is the thing that breaks the power of the one ring, and cements this film as an indelible, moving piece of pop cultural history.
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