Film title: “The Return of the King” (“Lord of the Rings – Part 3”), 2003
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen,Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, Miranda Otto
Running time: 210min
Rated PG-13 for intense battle scenes and frightening images

This epic is built on a grain of sand. And this is precisely what turns The Return of the King into pure gold and has lured 100,000 mortals from all corners of the earth to the star- and monster-studded spectacle surrounding its world premiere in Wellington, New Zealand, this Monday.
For the last part of the “Lord of the Rings (LOTR)”-trilogy, director Peter Jackson has once again played Gandalfian conjuror of not-so-cheap tricks – or CGI-magic. So, you cannot pass and turn away your eyes, though the story is nothing more than the good old final battle of good against evil.
High Noon in Middle Earth is fantastic realism of Balrog-dimensions. Neo Maximus action – gloomy Gladiator-style butchery mixed with cool Matrix-like ass-kicking – in a Technicolor dreamcoat provided by New Zealand’s pristine landscape and the Almighty computer.
Legions of Orcs, Elves, Hobbits, humans and their computer-generated doubles are marching against each other on the fields of Pelennor against backdrop of Kiwi-Land mountains tinged with the pitch-black darkness of fire and the Shadow.
“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me,” says Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Arthurian king-to-be whose Excalibur-equivalent, Anduril, has been reforged. “A day may come when the courage of Men fail . . . when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. This day, we fight!”
Indeed, they do, for most part of the film’s 210 minutes, to make the viewer feel really frightened enough.
As hell is unleashed, the audience gets the full rollercoaster ride with the Devil – the undead are summoned for the final battle, and winged dragon-like creatures called “fell beasts” are stretching out their claws to kill.
Well, it is all in the book by Oxford-scholar J.R.R. Tolkien. Although Jackson’s past as splatter-film director with a knack for the absurd shines through sometimes, when limbs are chopped off and evil monsters like giant-spider Shelob look particularly slimy and ugly.
Of course, when it comes to fighting the Evil, much should be at stake and things have to be sexed up.
But every beast has its beauty. Just as Jackson binds the audience in the oppressive darkness of the One Ring, visualized by the poisonous fumes and bleak bareness of Mordor, he gives them picture-postcard images of hope seemingly straight out of medieval lore.
Like Minas Tirith, the White City, with the White Tower of Ecthelion in the centre and the White Tree. A Camelothian fortress slouched against the mountain range, braving the Shadow that covers its walls in smoke and ash and fills its people’s hearts with fear.
And: it may be a man’s world, full of blood and sweat, but it is nothing without the women and their tears. Ornate they may be, but Jackson at least gives them more to do in this part of LOTR and more than Tolkien ever did.
Arwen’s (Liv Tyler) eyes in particular have it. She sheds more than a tear or two as she finally has to decide whether to marry Aragorn and thus give up her immortality. Too much dialogue is not necessary and would probably have to be dubbed again by Cate Blanchett anyway.
And Eowyn (Miranda Otto) finally lives up to her description as a “shield maiden” – no  black latex-clad Trinity, but true Middle-Earthian girl power. Daughter to a murdered father and unrequited lover of Aragorn, she rides into the battle in a man’s armour and strikes down the most powerful enemy, the Witch King, with her sword, thereby almost getting killed herself.
One of the most welcome returns in “The Return of the King”, though, is Gollum-Smeagol (part-Andrew Serkis, part-computer generated), the most striking and believable schizophrenic on the screen since Norman Bates. Naked, deformed and shrivelling example of how the absolute power of the Ring corrupts absolutely, he keeps lurking around, with the view to murder those “nasty Hobbitses” finally overpowering him.
As he ends in the hell-fire pit of Mount Doom, together with his “precious” Ring, there is nothing more to come than the fairy tale happy-ending.
And thus, the Magnificent Fellowship and its followers come to journey’s end – as Angel-voice Annie Lennox, accompanied by Spanish guitar, violin and flute, sings so soulfully for the end credits – but the magic made in Kiwi-Land will last forever.
All’s well that ends well – and LOTR certainly does.

ENDS (729 words)

Martina Anzinger is an MA Journalism-graduate of Westminster University and author of the book “Gainsborough Pictures Reframed: Or Raising Jane Austen for 1990s Film” (Peter Lang, 2003).

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