2004 Hugo Drama Long Form and 2003 Saturn Fantasy – RETURN OF THE KING

This is the first of the 40+ award-winning films I’ve covered here to also win an Academy Award for Best Picture.  It also won in all ten of the other Oscar categories that it was nominated for, including Best Director for Peter Jackson.  This was what we call a “phenomenon.”  The movie is impressive in a lot of ways: the battle scenes are bigger than ever, Minas Tirith looks fantastic, and there are many emotional moments between the characters.  There’s a lot of jesting about the homoeroticism of these films, but I think it is fair to say that there is some kind of love story between Sam and Frodo.  That’s clearest in this entry, as we see their ups and downs, Gollum and the Ring competing for their affections, their final triumph, and their bittersweet parting.  All of this gives the film more emotional weight than a lot of the fantasy fare out there.

So, this entry works very well, but I do consider the Academy’s recognition to be for the series as a whole, rather than just this one entry.  This particular film has some of the series’ highest highs, but I think is also has some of the biggest flaws.   The largest is the pacing: most of the first half is taken up with another giant battle; Frodo and Sam are all but forgotten, then the entire nature of the film changes at the halfway point as they take center stage.  It’s an odd flow of momentum.  And, of course, there’s the extra-long ending.

It’s as if Jackson, realizing what he had accomplished, decided to take a victory lap with the epilogue.  And then another one.  And then one more.  True, it’s shorter than the post-climax meanderings of the novel, which actually starts a whole ‘nother plot.  I’m sure Tolkeinistas could dissertate all night on how crucial the scouring of the Shire is to J.R.R.’s masterpiece, but I, and many others I know, think that cutting that plotline is one of the key areas where the films are better than the books.  Even with that gone, however, the movie still takes it sweet time ending after the big moment.  I do think that everyone fading off to the West is thematically crucial to the series, but it certainly could have been done more efficiently.

There’s also a pretty hefty cheesiness factor to all of these movies.  If you get caught up in the action, as most any fantasy fan would, it’s easy to miss some of this.  But, Peter Jackson has a lot of cornball maneuvers in his repertoire – jerky slo-mo, melodramatic slo-mo, characters gleaming in the sun, fake-out deaths, fake-out endings, to name a few.  And, he gets some of the mushiest performances that I’ve ever seen out of his actors.  As I said at the beginning of my Fellowship review though – it all works.  It’s the perfect pairing of director and material.  When adapting Tolkien, who self-consciously wrote a painfully sincere and old-fashioned story, this all works beautifully.  Remaking King Kong is another story altogether.

So, in summation (as if you didn't already know), these are excellent movies.

Grade: A

2003 Hugo Drama Long Form and 2002 Saturn Fantasy – THE TWO TOWERS

It hasn’t been long since I last spoke about Peter Jackson’s excellent adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The quality remains just as high in this middle entry.  In fact, this used to be my favorite of the three.  We’re past the heavy exposition of the first film, and we don’t have to deal with lengthy epilogues like the final film.

As far as the plot is concerned, not all that much happens.  Frodo and Sam begin the film walking to Mordor, and they end the film still walking to Mordor.  The other characters get involved in a major battle with orcs, but it’s really just a dress rehearsal for the bigger fights to come in the next film.  It’s okay that the plot stalls out though, as it gives the characters some breathing room and allows for some nice world-building.  The more we see of the bonds between these characters and the impacts of the coming war on the people of Middle Earth, the higher the stakes feel in the end.

The one new element here, which garnered much of the attention at the time, is the cg Gollum.  An effects team captures a brilliant, highly physical performance by actor Andy Serkis, and translates it to the bony, impossibly old, riddle-loving freak.  Gollum could be really annoying (he is in most adaptations), but he works pretty well here.

There’s also some nice walking trees.  And, it climaxes with an epic siege/battle at Helm’s Deep, which is probably the best action sequence of the series.  The focus on warfare in the second-half of the entry raises the stakes, and Jackson even manages to push an environmentalist theme (he argues that there is a favoring of pastoral hobbits and trees over Saurumon’s industrial orc-army in the books – I gather this comes out of Tolkien criticism, but I never really saw it in the books other than as a byproduct of Tolkien's anti-modernism. Either way, I like it here).  The filmmakers even try to include some women in one of literature’s greatest sausage fests by expanding the role of Eowyn (played by Miranda Otto).

I didn’t mention the acting last time.  Serkis, as already mentioned, is great. Ian McKellan is one of the best living actors, and his performance is truly amazing.  He has an incredibly expressive face.  Jonathan Rhys-Meyers steals a lot of scenes as the dwarf Boromir, and his comic banter with Orlando Bloom’s is a big ingredient in what makes Helm’s Deep so fun.  Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, and the hobbits all do fine jobs playing pretty dull, button-down characters.

As I said, it was my favorite in the theaters, but I don’t know if it stands up to repeat viewings as well as the others (especially Fellowship).  Maybe this is because I usually watch the extended versions these days, and the additional material is mostly unnecessary Merry and Pippen comedic bits.  Anyway, it’s still great.  I’ll probably be able to come up with a few things to complain about with the next movie.

Grade: A

2002 Hugo Dramatic and 2001 Saturn Fantasy – THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

I’ve speculated a few times on this blog about fantasy’s recent dominion over science fiction, both commercially (as reflected in sales) and critically (as reflected in these awards).  Is it less confidence of science, more pessimism about the future, or that fantasy is a genre that is – for whatever reason – more welcoming to female readers?  Today I feel like offering an alternative hypothesis: in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, fantasy just got really good.  Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman give us great, popular urban fantasy works.  George R. R. Martin creates a new, beloved fantasy world, and J. K. Rowling does the same on another order of magnitude.  And, of course, Peter Jackson skillfully adapts the greatest fantasy book series of all time into the greatest fantasy film series of all time. Of course fans are going to have fantasy on the brain.

I feel silly recounting the plot.  What sf fan hasn’t read the books, or at least seen the films, probably several hundred times apiece? There’s a powerful, evil magic ring.  Some peaceful little people have to take it to a volcano and throw it in, and various wizards, dwarves, elves, and knights try to escort them, while really ugly things try to kill them.  It starts as an epic, takes a few quiet moments in the shire, then gets even epic-ier.

Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson is such a perfect pairing of director and subject – it elevates both.  Peter Jackson’s other films just don’t measure up to this one (don’t get me started on his King Kong), and, I’m sure this is some sort of heresy, I prefer this version of Tolkien’s masterpiece to the original.  Tolkien, like all of the fantasy writers who’ve followed him, can be a bit dry and effected.  Jackson is bombastic, over-the-top, and painfully sincere (the last is an odd trait for someone with roots in low-budget horror).  Put the two together, and you get movie magic.

Jackson’s most important trait is his love of the material.  I’m not sure any other director would have lobbied so hard to film The Lord of the Rings simultaneously then release it as three big budget films; he got New Line to put a lot on the line for these films (though it more than paid off for them).  I don’t know if any other director would have micromanaged the effects house WETA to create such a rich and detailed world for these characters to inhabit. It's a nice parallel to Tolkien's obsession with creating languages and mythologies for Middle Earth.  Furthermore, Jackson does, especially in this film, remain amazingly close to the material.  Sorry Tom Bambadil fans, those scenes weren’t necessary and wouldn’t have played well.  Pretty much everything else is in here.

The result is amazing.  It manages to capture everything that makes fantasy a beloved genre: the sense of scale, the creation of a foreign, yet familiar, world with its own sense of a deep history, the action, the morality.  And there's that extra fine touch, that not enough of Tolkien's many copycats have followed, of centering his story around very humble protagonists.  Everything looks great and the movie moves quickly through a lot of exposition.  The sequence in the Mines of Moria is one of the most exciting in sf movie history.  And, with focuses on male friendship, the film manages to be fun, AND be about something.  Jackson really gets the series off on the right foot.

Grade: A