The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King: Review By Ghostman

As I sit here writing my review of my third favorite movie of all time on the top ten countdown list, I can remember a time when movies such as Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, Titanic, and The Dark Knight had such an epic scope this large in storytelling that watching the finale of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was breathtaking.

The Lord of the Rings have always been one of my favorite stories to be told to me when I was in bed, and growing up I always thought these books should be made into movies. Soon, my wish would come true. In 2001 shortly after the September 11th attacks, the first Lord of the Rings film was released. It showed to us that in those dark times, we always find a hero inside all of us. At the ripe age of 9 I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring and boy, was I mesmerized. I couldn't wait for The Two Towers to come out! Missing it in theaters, I waited for the VHS to come out (yes, I still had a VCR back in 2002).

Witnessing the large scale action scenes and the intense drama between the characters as Frodo sets out to destroy The One Ring was enchanting to experience. After the first two films came out, it was now onto the final movie, the epic conclusion, the grande finale, the one to top them All: The Return of the King.

Return if the King has to be one of those great movies of our-time to come out once every Generation, and it sure as hell is! Everything in the film is done absolutely wonderful; the visual effects, sound, music is all very beautiful to see and hear the sounds of Middle Earth and listen to the skull crushing, bone splitting noises of war, is an incredible sensation.

Each performance done by all the actors and extras in this did an outstanding job. Elijah Wood is great at playing Frodo. He shows how his character has transformed throughout every film as the story progresses. Seeing him as a young Hobbit growing up into this warrior who takes stand and fights his battles is amazing and Elijah Wood did great at showing that.

Ian McKellen plays the great and powerful Gandalf the White. Ian McKellen can sure act for his age. Both Dumbledore and Gandalf have got to be the greatest wise Wizards that have ever graced the cinema screen. Ian McKellen does a wonderful job at acting so majestic and wise, you feel his presence whenever he is on screen. I can't wait for him to reprise his role again for The Hobbit Parts 1 and 2! Viggo Mortenson who plays the ever so awesome and warrior material, Aargorn. Aargorn must face his destiny to become the King of Gondor, something that is a difficult challenge for him. Viggo plays him well, we see how much of a responsibility it is for Aargorn and how he must accept it and fight for his right to be King.

The story is fantastic, the writing couldn't of been any better; it has that wonderful flow as it paces along for a movie that is roughly nearly 4 hours long. The editing is great, the editing helps pace the film and how the story moves, it makes sure that every loose-end is wrapped up for it's grand final third act in it's conclusion of the film and does fine at doing that. The visual are amazing; you would actually think that Peter Jackson himself went to Middle Earth and doc*mented all of this! Every landscape has such beautiful imagery, each wide scoped view of mountain tops and green valleys work like a painting that should be put on display. Real wonderful work is presented here.

I watched the theatrical cut many times before, but never the extended version...until now. About two months ago, I finally got to see the extended cut of The Return of the King, and it was better than I thought. It made the film even more grandiose and full of minor detail to story telling was added to an astonishing piece of art-work captured on film. No wonder this movie won every academy award Oscar it was nominated for, this movie is wonderful!

I can't say enough about how great this is, and it's one of my favorite fantasy epics I have ever seen on film, This movie will go down in history as one of the greatest stories ever told on screen.

-McLovin