Clever Hobbits, to climb so high

If it hasn't already become apparent, I have a fascination with film franchises. I can't really explain it, the appeal tends to be different depending on the franchise (in the case of Star Trek, the appeal is how the filmmakers tried to keep the series relevant over several decades).

Over the past week, I rewatched all of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. Everyone's seen them, everyone knows them. But a curious thing happened. From 2001-2003, people went buttfuck over these movies. My mom and I must have watched the first two films a dozen times each before the third film came out. When the third film did come out, everyone saw it a hundred times, smiled to themselves and agreed on what a great three years it's been following the little people on their quest to return their faulty jewelry to the jeweler. We all forgot about these films and were on our way.

I realized I hadn't watched any of these films in years and decided it was time to revisit them. Having not seen them in years, I was able to approach them with fresh eyes.

Spoilers ahead for both people in the entire world who haven't seen these films.



My initial reaction was "this looks kind of shitty". My overall reaction is "thank God and all the pretty angels for Peter Jackson".

The Fellowship of the Ring
Despite the first film's Academy Award for cinematography, I thought it looked pretty bad. There's a lot of digital noise (I say "a lot", but there's hardly any; my point is any is too much in a fantasy film) and the colors seem to have had nothing done to them. The scenes taking place in daylight look very straightforward and simple. It's not stylized. During those scenes, and particularly the scene where Arwen is being chased on horseback by the Nazgûl, I never forgot that I was watching a stunt crew ride through a field of pines, planted so that they can be sold as Christmas trees. The darker scenes, Moria in particular, are much better, and that'll become a trend throughout the series.

The film as a whole is far more leisurely than the latter two. It allows us a long time to take in Middle-Earth and get to know the characters and their histories. It's all relatively small-scale and character-driven, and all the better for it. A tribute to the three editors and Jackson's unifying vision that the series gets tighter and more plot-driven as it goes, ratcheting up the tension and building to the final battle.

The sets are beautiful, and that's something that we won't see enough of in the later films. Sure, the next two films have lovely sets, but we never spend the same amount of time exploring them that we do here. Bag End and Rivendell especially benefit from the slow tracking shots and long dialogue scenes.

A scene I never had enough appreciation for as a lad was the fight in Moria between the Fellowship and the goblins. That scene is edited to perfection, staged immaculately. The lack of a musical score and the confined nature of the room the scene takes place in, especially when the cave troll lumbers in, makes this possibly the best-realized combat scene in a trilogy of films fraught with combat sequences.

Another kind thing I can say about the film is that it has my favorite ending of any of the films in the trilogy. The splintering of the Fellowship and the death of Boromir lead so perfectly into that heart-stopping shot of Frodo and Sam looking over the mountains and into Mordor.

Outside of individual scenes, I can't stress enough that this is very small-scale. It's a great film, and on its own would easily be one of the best fantasy films of all time. Unfortunately, it's improved upon in almost every area by the succeeding two films in the series. So let's move on to them, shall we?

The Two Towers
Here's where the cinematography gets better. The colors are still unsaturated and unstylized, but the picture is crisper, less digital. The whole film gets a naturalistic look that makes it easy to believe that Middle-Earth is a real place and the exotic New Zealand locales only add to this strange-but-believable world. It's not how I would have thought to shoot the trilogy, but it's probably the best possible way to shoot the trilogy.

Even the night scenes, particularly Helm's Deep, have a very natural look that doesn't detract from the very real fear of seeing genetically engineered soldiers assembled out of H.R. Giger paintings and death row inmates as far as the eye can see.

I would describe the look of the film as "exceptionally functional, but unexceptional". Of course, the look of this film doesn't begin or end at the cinematography, because this is the ultimate effects film. Never once gratuitous, always working hard to blend the CGI and visual trickery into the shot as seamlessly as possible, every filmmaker dealing with CGI has learned almost their entire modern effects vocabulary from these films and not one of them (with the possible exception of Chris Nolan, but I attribute that to his notorious hatred for CGI) has attained the heights of beauty that Jackson has for this film.

It speaks to Jackson's desire to make his audience live and love the world of Middle-Earth and his resistance to the studio's pressures that he never once goes for cheap, flashy CGI. Sure, he takes a lot of shortcuts with it, but he's not relying on it to sell his films. As a 12-year-old going to see this movie, I was amazed by the realism of the Ents, of the massive armies. I never once recognized it as CGI or a special effect. I thought there were thousands of actors murdering each other for the sake of this film.

And that's not even the most impressive effect. Yes, Gollum is beginning to show his age. His skin is a bit textureless, his eyes unemotive, but his movements are so perfect and Andy Serkis's performance...my God, Andy Serkis's performance. Perfect. Magnificent. Iconic. Sick, sad, pathetic, endearing and adorable all at once, wrapped together with the hint of malice in his every inflection and topped with that voice that everyone will remember forever. He's our generation's Yoda. If I were to present a case of the Academy's egregious oversights in its acting categories, Exhibit A would be Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, Exhibit B would be Andy Serkis for The Two Towers and Return of the King.

That said, the three converging plot strands are fantastic. Aragorn-Legolas-Gimli's story is exciting and breathless with all the exciting action and heroics. Frodo-Sam-Gollum is the dark side of the trilogy, the part that wears you down and makes you remember what's at stake. Elijah Wood's performance is darker and sadder as Frodo begins to lose his will and lose his mind. But the overlooked middle child of this film is Merry-Pippin. Here we begin to see Merry take charge of his life and his responsibility. He starts to grow up and fight while Pippin stays naive and confused.

It's a marvelous film, as if you didn't already know that.

The Return of the King

Can your books do this, book fags? CAN YOUR BOOKS DO THIS?

Let me back up. If you have memories of scraping your brains off the back of a theater wall with a chisel, congratulations, you've seen The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (or The Dark Knight). It's one of the most awesome uses of film to tell a story on an enormous scale, comparable only to Lawrence of Arabia.

This trilogy has been an epic since frame #1, but by this film it's the epic to end all epics. There's a reason The Lord of the Rings is synonymous with the word "epic". There's a reason I just used the word epic four times in one paragraph. There's no other way to describe this film. Every vista, every aerial shot, every mind-blowing set or effects shot just hammers home what an incredible achievement of scale this whole series has been and how we've been building since the first second to a climax unlike anything the modern filmgoer has ever seen.

The cinematography is dark and stylized, finally. Especially in the Frodo-Sam-Gollum plot line, the sun seems to have been blown out of the sky. The only colors we ever see are the nightmarish greens of Minas Morgul and the furious reds of Mount Doom. Gondor is all glossy white marble, shining swords and armor. The orc makeup seems to have metastasized and exaggerated, like an orc looking at itself in a funhouse mirror. The editing never once stumbles during its tour-de-force juggling act.

Almost everyone in the cast is doing the best work of their careers, throwing themselves recklessly against the material, clinging to Peter Jackson's vision, taking the leap and hoping it doesn't become the biggest disaster, the biggest laughing stock in filmmaking history.

Despite that, Aragorn's arc was finished long ago, and so he doesn't spend much time on screen. Mostly he's the eyes through which we see the War of the Ring. It's the Hobbits that get the dynamic acting. Elijah Wood is haggard, barely a shell of a man being manipulated, controlled, led and fighting it every second of the way. Sean Astin plays Sam as barely being able to keep Frodo, let alone himself, sane in the face of the task that never should have been theirs.

Still, Merry and Pippin's story is sadly overlooked by admirers of these films. Dominic Monaghan's and Billy Boyd's performances, like everyone's performances, is more full of urgency and force than in the previous films.

So the question that I asked myself before I started watching these films was: do they hold up?

Yes. Absolutely, yes. Every laurel thrown its way, every award was deserved. It's our Star Wars. It's the reason movies have mass appeal. It's an experience that brings people together. Maybe it'll end wars.

Thank god and all the pretty angels for Peter Jackson.

The Fellowship of the Ring - 10/10
The Two Towers - 10/10
The Return of the King - 10/10
The Lord of the Rings - 11/10