Review of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
By Dr. Grouchy
[Disclaimer: Dr. Grouchy’s opinions are his own and not supported by or endorsed by any official body, including the National Football League or the International Olympic Committee. In fact, no grown man or woman, or ape that knows sign language would agree with most anything that he says.]
Well, it’s a good thing that I sit in front of a computer on my ass all day, it prepared me for the latest long and arduous Lord of the Rings episode. Return of the King. This is a pretty good and involved film, but totally wrong in every account when it comes to historical accuracy. I cannot find this king in any history book I’ve ever read. At least they didn’t have Elvis do a cameo, that would have really ruined the movie. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if it were romantic-comedy and a musical all in one!
Let me recap the previous two movies, as I sat through them and all of the associated documentaries and outtakes over the past week. I actually had to take a week of sick leave just to carry this out. Thankfully, after a week of sitting glued to the tube, watching all 320 hours of the Lord of the Rings extended DVDs, I was as pasty-white as a frail Hobbit, and had a hacking cough. [Gollum! Gollum! Excuse my hacking cough….]
In the first movie, there is a whole town of midgets. Maybe they were originally circus-folk or something, but they aren’t very hard workers and they seem to sit around a lot and drink ale and smoke weed. And, they were the first sign that Middle Earth really needs a chain of Supercuts. Can you say, 
“Queer Eye for the Hobbit?” Well, I suspect there are a number of hole-dwelling Hobbits who are light in the loafer (if they weren’t always going around barefoot with those awful big hairy feet… does Supercuts also give pedicures?) They liked to wear lots of green velvet and in this movie, Frodo is chosen by a bunch of stuck up Elves and others in a big 
City Council meeting to take this old ring to throw in a volcano. Along the way, they do some hiking and kayaking, and camp out and eventually everyone gets jealous of Frodo, who has the best clothes and curly hair and a manservent along with this gold ring and pretty undershirt. So, after much ado, they part ways. (That took about six hours in the extended release. It seemed not that unlike a remake of the 1970’s classic, Deliverance, which was much shorter and to the point.)
In the second movie, Frodo and his friend Sam who has this real obvious crush on him, have to walk a lot. Kids these days don’t like to walk much. It showed with the young Hobbits who were always complaining about their journey. 
It was good that Sam was their to rub Frodo’s big hairy feet. They added back in the lost hot-tub scene in the extended DVD, so you could see where this relationship was going. 
Anyhow, while they were hiking, kayaking and enjoying nature, there was this big war with Orcs off in Helm’s Deep. There were a whole bunch of black Orcs (are there also Caucasian Orcs? I’ll discuss how racist this moview was later) and some who were bigger and smarter and some who were dwarf-Orcs. The humans were outnumbered, but they won in the end, because the Elves came to help and some others showed up at the last minute. They weren’t very organized, so they were fortunate they won at all. I think there were only a few people left at the end, and I don’t know if there were any Elves left, but they only came begrudgingly and they seemed mad that they were missing some boating event. Other than that, there was lots of walking-talking trees, and Gandalf died in the first movie and when he came back to life his clothes had all been bleached. (Again, this points out how racist the filmmakers were. All the “black” guys were bad and all the “white” guys were good. Even though that’s a reasonably acurate sterotype and all, it seemed to oversimplify everything in this movie. But, I think it might be because there weren’t any black people in England in those days.)
Now we can start talking about the latest move, Return of the King. The movie starts off with a flashback to Gollum when he was Smegol. Or, more acurately, Smegol before he became Gollum. It shows the power of the ring to corrupt, but it also shows that Smegol was always kind of creepy.
After that, we switched back to the rest of the fellowship meeting up at Isengard. The tower is flooded and what do we find there but the two young Hobbits all high on weed. And drunk. Not the example to set for young children. I am sure that The Christians would not be happy about this. After all, Frodo never seemed to be as much of a glutton for the food, spirits and weed as the other Hobbits. And, speaking of (Elijah) Wood… where were all the Ents? Back in the forrest now that one little old wizard was vanquished??
The Fellowship Rides Through Fangorn Forrest
Then, back to Rohan where the fellowship (minus two) sits around wondering what to do on the top of a mountain that routinely gets gale force winds. They finally decide to head south. Maybe for the weather (warmer and less windy), or maybe for the women, but anyhow, Gandalf announces he is going and rides off on the horse King for Gondor. Once in Minas Tirith, Gandalf is really abusive of the King, calling him “steward” all the time and wacking him with his big white staff. What’s up with that? (Is Gandalf a wife beater too?) Maybe this is the new angry Gandalf. After all, he’s really old (300 lives of men?) and we all know how crochety old people get when they don’t get enough sleep or get to the Country Kitchen for supper by 4 PM.
Aragorn confronts Gandalf about his problem with weed.
Gandalf gets pissy and rides south to Minas Tirith, looking for Spring Break action.
The little Hobbits all of a sudden think that they are warriors. Even though they are much shorter than everybody else. But, this comes in handy when Took has to climb up this big pile of kindling wood and light it on fire, because he’s too small to really notice. The thing about the fire is it sets off all these watch fires on mountain top after mountain top. And, the fires are lit by men who obviously just sit there in the cold, waiting for the first and only time the fire gets lit. They must sit there for months if not years doing nothing else. Then, if it gets lit, it is a one way message to Rohan to send help. No one seems to care that these guys now need to hunt for wood and cart it back up the mountain to build another pile of wood for the next time the King of Gondor has to send a message. Their job must be one of those that they threaten new soldiers with to keep them in line. These guys live out in the country, and obviously don’t have cable or anything, but it seems like quite a hole in the plot that they didn’t just phone or send a telegram.
So, while the stronghold at Minas Tirith is under seige from the minions of Mordor, this Elf chick that 
Aragorn used to date tells her dad and he’s not too happy. He wants her to move with the family, but she wants to stay behind with her boyfriend. He decides to bribe Aragorn by gluing together this old sword he found. (Talk about a second-hand gift! How about some of that nice silver underewar instead?) He takes it in a sneaky fashion to Aragorn, when he’s out camping on this mountain with his Dwarf and Elf friend. Aragorn takes the sword and heads down this road into the mountain that no one comes back from. He must figure it’s just an urban legend, because he walks right in and tells this army of dead people that they lost a bet and have to follow him and do everything he says.
As all this is going on, the Orcs are attacking Minas Tirith with the giant Mountain Trolls, trebuchets and they’ve quite outnumbered the humans, just like in the last movie. And, just like in the last movie, the riders from Rohan show up when all is lost to save the day. They have to deal with the Black Lord, an undead King who serves Sauron. No man can kill him, but he is stabbed by the Hobbit from behind, and this gives the other chick that Aragorn is dating a chance to stab the Black Lord and he dies and shrivels up like the witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”
The blonde Elf even takes out an elephant himself. He swings up, kills the elephant, and slides down the trunk on his skateboard when he’s done. (Just like the last movie.)
The Blonde Elf Makes A Bold Plan
There are still a hell of a lot of Orcs attacking, and they have breached the city walls. This really looks a lot like the last movie. This time, instead of Elves and the tree-folk killing the Orcs, Aragorn shows up with the Army of the Dead, and they swarm over the city like a Scrubbing Bubbles commercial.
Now that the Orcs are defeated, and evil has had it’s big ugly ass kicked by the humans, there are about 10,000 corpses left rotting on the battlefield. Who’s going to clean all that up? The women of Gondor? I don’t think you are going to find many volunteers? There’s your “hero”, the guy who cleans up THIS mess.
The Evil Eye of Mordor
The humans want to find a way to distract the Evil Eye, and allow Frodo to get the ring up to throw in the volcano. So they call out the rest of the Orcs and evil dudes in Mordor. This works, but it’s pretty dangerous. Here’s my idea: What would distract a big evil guy better than a huge pair of breasts? If they just built a really large woman out of some of the kindling wood they were gathering for the fires, they would find that the Eye naturally wanders and is drawn to the cleavage. Then it is fixated, and Frodo can do whatever he wants.
Meanwhile, Frodo and Samwise Ganja are following Gollum into Mordor. Gollum tells them they have to climb up this cliff so they can sneak into Mordor and pass by the Orcs that are heading to fight the humans at the Black Gate. They scale this incredible cliff, it is such a high view, that people around me were starting to have vertigo. Gollum is trying hard to turn Frodo against his fat friend. Frodo gets so mad at Sam, that he yells at him and tells him he’s a bad dresser. Sam stomps off in a huff, and climbs back down the cliff. It took them a day to climb up, but seems to only take about 15 minutes for Sam to climb back down.
At the top, Frodo has entered a tunnel that Gollum told him he had to go through to get to Mordor. I’m really starting to think that Hobbits are dim. But, the kid walks into the tunnel and right into the lair of a big-ass spider. This spider is hungry, and smells fresh young meat. Frodo seems to be really drugged out. Maybe he had been smoking Hobbit weed when we weren’t watching, but he tries to fight off the advances of the horny spider, and gets poked from behind. He is quickly wrapped up in the spider’s webbing, and seems to hover on Death’s Doorstep. All I can say about this scene is that it seemed to be very cheap for the director to start using cartoons whenever a scene was difficult. Take this image of Frodo and Spider Man, for example.
Sam lets bygones be bygones and scurries back up the cliff. This time, he can scale it in mere minutes because of the overwelming power of love. He rushes on the scene to find his partner at the mercy of the huge spider. He also tries to kill the spider, but only succeeds in stabbing it in the eye and forcing it to retreat. But, it gives him enough time to unwrap Frodo and see that he’s been turned into a Goth by the spider’s venom.
We thought all the Orcs were gone, but I guess they heard a ruckus on top of this cliff that is like a mile up in the air. They also scurried up the cliff somehow, even though Gollum swore up and down that only he knew of the “secret stairs”. They take Frodo back to the Dark Lord’s tower. (Not to be confused with Sauron’s tower. There are too many towers in this move.) Frodo’s glistening white naked body drives the Orcs and the Uruk Hai warriors who are left in the tower mad. 
They all pretty much kill each other, each trying to be the one to touch him and brush his hair. It seems a little silly, but I was able to suspend my disbelief. What I couldn’t suspend was amazement at how Sam enters the tower and runs up 40 stories in about a minute. He dispatches three Orcs along the way, using Sting (not the singer, the sword). His eyes are as big as saucers when he sees that Frodo is tied up, and glistening white and naked on the floor. He cradles Mr. Frodo gently and sings to him as he shares his body warmth.
The humans are now traveling to the Black Gate. They get there about the time that Sam and Frodo run into Gollum at the foot of Mount Doom. They wrestle with Gollum and think he is gone. Just like last time when they thought he’d been pushed off the Really Tall Cliff and lived. They really don’t learn, do they? When they get to the Black Gate, they get taunted by some Frenchmen atop the castle. It figures that the French would side with Sauron, doesn’t it?
While the humans now take on the Orcs and Trolls at the Black Gate, to again divert the eye, Sam hoists his pal up on his shoulders and scurries up the 14,000 foot volcano in about 10 minutes. I think this is the only thing that Hobbits are good at, scurrying. Anyhow, Frodo is tormented, he can’t throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, so he once again has to fight Gollum for the ring. He loses his favorite finger in the process. Gollum was very hungry, as he had not eaten much on this journey, and he didn’t like the Elf bread that the boys had been sharing.
Eventually, Gollum and the ring fall into the fire and drown in a pool of liquid lava. This scene was stolen directly from Terminator 2. And, I thought that Arnie did a much more convincing job of drowing in lava. He even gave a “thumbs up” at the end. Class act.
The humans are losing…. AGAIN. Humans are really painted as losers in this movie, it’s really sad. The Eagles have to come and save the humans from the dragon riders. Don Henley is really looking old. After the ring is destroyed, the earth opens up and swallows all the bad (black) people and the good (white) people seem to back up and avoid the giant pits that form. (I won’t go into my concerns about how racist this movie was. I think it’s because Australia was a penal colony for England that they are jealous and want to make it look like everyone in England is racist. And even though most English probably are, it isn’t anything to base a stereotype on.)
The Eagles bring Sam and Frodo back to Minas Tirith. They survive thousand degree heat, after being parched and stranded between lava flows on the mountain for days. It’s just another stretch the author is expecting us to buy, lock stock and barrel. When Frodo awakens, he has a big sleep over with all his buddies. Even the wizard Gandalf, who died in the last movie, jumps in bed. The bed seemed small, but then again, they were a strange fellowship.
The last two hours of the movie are dedicated to telling us how life gets back to normal in The Shire. The Hobbits are happy and drunk most of the time. Nothing new. They Hobbits of The Shire really never noticed that anything at all happened in the past 13 months. But, Sam feels he has to go back in the closet, I guess and marries a woman. The little Hobbit boys, Merry and Pippin, continue to act foolish. Frodo pines alone for Sam, and writes a romantic comedy about his adventures. After four years, the Elves still aren’t done leaving Middle Earth. They all head over to the yacht club for a very long and drawn out hug-fest. Bilbo shows up, and we can only assume that Aragorn is too busy being the new King, and moreover too busy with his two girlfriends to come bid them farewell.
[As an aside, who is going to take advantage of all the really great real estate that the elves are leaving behind? I mean, they had these awesome cities in the cliffs, and really cool treehouses in the woods. I imagine there are developers at the Prancing Pony, drinking beer and planning up how to turn it all into tract housing and shopping malls. And, what happened to Harry Potter?? I didn’t see him once in the movie, even though Gandalf the Headmaster of Hogwarts was there. Maybe Harry was too busy or turned ugly like some child actors do, like the kid from the Munsters.]
Agent Smith, from the Matrix, is piloting the boat, and the glowing Elf chick from the first movie is back. I guess they hooked up at some point. Frodo announces that he likes larger men, and he departs as the other three Hobbits cry, with his hand in Gandalfs. Gandalf looks strangely like a Catholic priest in his long white robe, holding the boy’s hand. I swear that I turned to my friend and we both said at the exact same time, “He’s Gandalf’s bitch now!”
That’s about it. Several hours, a burst bladder from holding in the large Mountain Dew, and some bed sores, and the final installment is over. I have to say, that despite the historical inaccuracies, and the erotica, the movie was enjoyable and stimulating. I felt a small bit of the tingley and excited fervor that the young men did the day before. I read in the paper that there were about a hundred people, mostly in their mid-twenties, with no jobs, wearing their best homemade cloakes and dropped off by their mothers to watch all three episodes in one day. The article said there were psychologists on hand to help them cope with cold harsh reality when the movie was over and they had to wait in the cold for their mothers to come pick them up, knowing that some of them had to be at Wal-Mart, or the hobby store they worked at by 9:00 the next day.
The Quad City Premier of LOTR:ROTK
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to explore the romantic triangle between the Elf, the Dwarf and Aragorn. (Those things happen when men are away at war, or camping in Georgia.) I also didn’t have an opportunity to expand on how I feel this movie proves we are all living inside The Matrix. Anyhow, I was tingley on sugar and giddy as a gelding Hobbit as I walked out of the theater emergency exit – feeling good about the movie and glad that I wasn’t a short Hobbit, as Aerosmith played the loud final verses of the movie soundtrack.
Well, until J.R.R. Tolkien writes another 500,000 page word book, that’s all there is to say about this version of Middle Earth! fin, Dr. G….
Submitting Comment, Give me a second...
That was fucking hilarious…