O lord
Return of the King puts the final spin on this Ring cycle.

By Patrick Macias

THE EWOKS INCAPACITATED Star Wars number three/six, Return of the Jedi. The Matrix collapsed light years before the finish line. But with the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the quest to deliver "The Greatest Fantasy Trilogy Ever Made" has been completed. The hype is right. The Return of the King is the best of the three, but only in part. And it all depends on which part you're talking about. All three movies were scripted and shot back-to-back, so the conventional line is that the mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy should be considered a single film. But they all went into the editing room months apart and emerged with different personality traits. The Return of the King has flaws, if different ones than its preceding chapters.

The Fellowship of the Ring, '01's entry, saw director Peter Jackson unable to hold a shot for more than a few seconds. His filmic ADD had worked before in horror comedies like Dead Alive and in the emotionally exhausting Heavenly Creatures, but a blink-and-you'll-miss-it style couldn't convey the vastness of Middle-earth. What was the point of all that production design and CGI if you couldn't actually enjoy any of it? Fellowship, even in "special extended DVD" editions, un-spools like a trailer.

For '02's Two Towers, so many changes were made to Tolkien's original story line that it risked losing the plot altogether. Instead of developing the protagonists, the sequel (written, as were all three films, by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson – though Towers featured additional contributions from Stephen Sinclair) went after second-stringers with a vengeance. While the likes of King Theoden, Eowyn, Faramir, and Arwen hogged center stage, Gimli the dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) became comic relief. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) became "the guy who senses things coming." And Ian McKellen's magnificent Gandalf barely rated a cameo, leaving those who remained behind to give increasingly campy speeches.

And, of course, The Two Towers' overambitious plan of attack left multiple story and character arcs in progress during the first act of Return of the King. We're still mucking about with various monarchs, noble families, and peasants as the newest LOTR unfolds, and it's beginning to get positively Python-esque. Liv Tyler's Arwen, who spends most of Return either (a) inactive yet on-screen or (b) crying, remains the poster child for the series' dramatic missteps. Late in Return's game, we're told that unless the quest to destroy the ring pans out, Arwen will have to check into the boneyard without kissing boyfriend Aragorn (American Yakuza's Viggo Mortensen) good-bye.

But the last things this story needed were more mechanical attempts to raise the tension level. Especially when our main characters, hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), are still on their dangerous trek to the volcanic Mount Doom. Wood has little to do now but look strung out and distressed, so it's Astin who takes up the mantle as the real heart and soul of Return. Not only does he brave a loving relationship with Wood likely to produce backhanded snickers, but he's also a magnificent fat action hero sworn to protect his master from computer-generated ghoulies like Gollum and ravenous giant spiders.

When Gandalf and plucky halfling Pippin (Billy Boyd) arrive at the kingdom of Gondor – ground zero for the long-awaited War of the Ring – the tone of Return becomes quiet and hushed. This is, as Gandalf puts it, "the deep breath before the plunge" (though it'll probably sound more like crinkly wrappers and popcorn being munched). Heroically, Jackson has finally decided to slow down and take a breath himself. The lighting of the beacons, a call to battle only mentioned in the books, is allowed to build and build until it reaches Wagnerian heights. From here on out, Jackson assumes a total mastery of the material, and even the deviations from Tolkien's text start to look like improvements.

The author only devoted 14 pages or so to the big showdown between good and evil. Here, Jackson musters everything he's got, and I do mean everything, and delivers the ultimate war movie spectacle of our time. With armored horses, giant elephants, flaming battering rams, flying whatsits, and what looks like half a billion soldiers, it plays like a shared wet dream between Buffalo Bill and D.W. Griffith. Maybe depicting mass death and destruction isn't what cinema was invented for, nor the direction it should be headed, but it sure as hell shows off what the medium can do.

By the emotionally drawn-out ending, there's no middle ground left in Middle-earth anymore. You'll either be bawling like a baby or eyeing the exits with dismissive, Gandalf-sanctioned shrugs of "eh, hobbits ..." The long, arduous journey to the credits may not have been perfect, and perilously few of those character subplots ever pay out, but for a hearty share of its 3-hour-and-18-minute running time, there can be no doubt that The Return of the King rules.

'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King' opens Wed/17. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.