Too many flashbacks. Too much cutting from one piece of action to another and back (I’m clearly not of the zap generation). Too much crawling up and sliding down mountains. Too much Gollum. Too much simpering by Arwen and, come to think of it, Éowyn. Too much Slow == Important. Interminable battles, interminable whitespace between events (people standing or sitting around and occasionally saying something), interminable horror scenes, interminable farewells. And still the head-to-one-side cuteness of Aragorn when he’s already been crowned king.

Yes, this is The Return of the King, of course. I watched it a few years ago on my own when I was ill, fast-forwarding most of the Gollum stretches and all of Shelob, joined by Secunda (who was also running a fever) for the coronation, and remembered mostly the good bits.

I don’t think I want to see it ever again, at least not without the fast-forward button at my fingertip; I’d watch only thirty percent or so. All of Rohan, some of the fighting, the rescue of Faramir (but not Denethor running through the streets of Minas Tirith burning and throwing himself off the parapet; that was just plain silly), the fall of Barad-Dûr, the coronation and the ending after the interminable farewell at the Grey Havens with a last helping of Elven refinement.

When I wrote the previous entry I completely forgot to mention the annoying moth that serves as Gandalf’s messenger, but in this one it appeared again —in the middle of a battle!— and it annoyed me again.

But Pippin and Merry were both splendid, and I really liked seeing Éowyn and Faramir happy together at the coronation without the angsty scene that Peter Jackson would inevitably have made of their becoming happy if he’d included it. Faramir was still a bit of a wimp, brave only in a helpless effort to placate his father, but less almost-evil than in The Two Towers.

And the battles in this one, though too long again, were magnificent. Taking out the mûmakil was worth watching the whole Battle of Pelennor Fields. Some details of the battles, too: Legolas’ triumphant look and Gimli’s “still counts as only one” when Legolas brings down the mûmak, Éowyn’s “I am no man”, Théoden’s death. Trolls, who clearly don’t understand much, and mûmakil who don’t understand anything at all. And six thousand cavalry do look impressive, even though (as my other half just pointed out) they charged with the shields still hung on the side of their horses instead of on their arms, where they belong.

Even though I can say, on hindsight, that I dislike most of it and hate some of it (this version of Elrond, for instance, I hate intensely; and what is he doing riding to Aragorn to tell him that Arwen is dying?) I was spellbound, and emerged as from the vasty deep after three hours and twelve minutes with no sense of any real-world time having passed. I must admit that Peter Jackson did a very good job, but it wasn’t Tolkien. I’m now rereading the whole Lord of the Rings (though in the book we haven’t even left the Shire yet) as an antidote.