The Return of the King (but only after 25 minutes of infernal movie trailers)

The Return of the King (but only after 25 minutes of infernal movie trailers)Jerz’s LIteracy Weblog)

My parents came to visit for a few days, so Leigh and I skipped out to see The Return of the King at a matinee. (We saw The Two Towers separately last year.) (*Spoilers*)

Of course any cuts are painful; and I was particularly sad not to see Christopher Lee and Brad Dourif in this one (they play Saruman and Wormtongue; I knew their scene had been filmed but cut). For TTT, I was a little annoyed that Faramir (the “good” brother of Boromir) was made to take the hobbits away from their mission, but I didn’t notice any similar damage in this movie.

The aerial shot showing the singal fires leading from Minas Tirith to where Aragorn sits gloomily on Theoden’s front porch was stunning. During the battle at Minas Tirith, when Legolas is swinging around one of the huge elephant creatures, I couldn’t help but think of Luke Skywalker and the Imperial Walker, but the comic value of Legolas dismounting from the trunk and landing right in front of Gimli was well done. (I thought some of the Gimli humor in The Two Towers was excessive.)

I don’t get out to see movies much… we bought a ticket for the 11:45 showing, but it was 12:10 when the movie actually started. Twenty-five minutes of trailers? For a movie that was already three hours long? I found it infuriating.

But what can I do? I’m not exactly a regular movie-goer… other than a family outing to Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, the only movies I’ve seen in the past few years have been Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

One thought on “The Return of the King (but only after 25 minutes of infernal movie trailers)

  1. re: the demands of a four hour film… Here, here! Commerce and art meet again! And they don’t even give us an intermission! I hope this won’t stop you from going to the movies…films should be social events, in my opinion.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *