Guelph

IT'S ooo-VER!!! The Lord of the Rings trilogy finally comes to an end with this Titanic-length conclusion. And it is unbelievable. What we have here is mostly action, but oh what action it is. If you thought the battle for Helm's Deep was wild in The Two Towers, you may want to bring some heart medication for this one. Never before has there been warfare of this scale shown on a movie screen. At one point, I was sitting there shaking my head at the sheer insanity of it all. Now, looking back, we can finally add up all three LOTR movies and judge it as one complete story, and it truly is the best movie/movie series ever in the history of movie-making. The first film was basically the setup, the beginning of the story; Film #2 was the middle part, where things have calmed down a bit and we're not quite sure what's going to happen. Part 3 puts us squarely into the climax of the story, with barely any time to catch our breaths before we are assaulted by more violence. In fact, the principal battle in this movie is longer than many movies themselves. Peter Jackson is an obsessed, miracle-working genius and if he and everyone else associated with this masterpiece do not get Oscars, then it will be the biggest scam in Academy Award history (the two previous farces being Saving Private Ryan losing out to Shakespeare in Love, and The Phantom Menace losing the special effects Oscar to a movie whose big effect was slow motion) Don't get me wrong, there are a few little... irritants? Here. My biggest was that some of the characters seemed to win against staggeringly overwhelming odds; I know it's a fantasy film, but even I had trouble swallowing a couple of things I saw here. Also, while the ending is necessary and wraps up the series nicely, it is a little long (some uncultured idiots were actually walking out of the movie before it was over), giving us something like 15 minutes of epilogues before the credits. This is fine on first viewing, but repeated viewings may be a little difficult to get through. What else can I say? It's Lord of the Rings. You can't really not like it if you liked the first two, and if you haven't seen the first two, then you shouldn't be watching this first. It would be like walking into Braveheart two hours into the movie. I hope for one thing: since this series is such a perfect success, it would be nice to see a resurgence of fantasy films in the world. Star Wars made sci-fi films popular again, and this should do the same for the fantasy genre. Up until 2001's Fellowship, the last good fantasy movie was 1989's Willow. With today's technology, anything can happen in movies and now is the time to start translating some other great fantasy books to the big screen, like The Sword of Shannara or A Spell For Chameleon. I can only hope.

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