The third and final part of arguably one of the greatest trilogies of all time sees Frodo and Sam get ever closer to destroying the ring unaware of what awaits them. The final part of one of the best trilogies ever had a lot to achieve even with its rather long running time. With the extended version running in at just over four hours there is plenty of time to tie up the many plot threads that have amassed over the previous two parts. Like the audience watching it in one go, the characters are all tied and have been through a lot.The threat of Shelob was well worth the wait. I am not a fan of spiders at the best of times but this is how i imagine all spiders are. The threat comes after Gollum has won in trying to separate Frodo and Sam although by the time Shelob appears, Gollum has seemingly met his end. That portion of the film went on just the right amount of time.
This doesn't have a battle like Helms Deep but it still has great fight battles that are completely gripping and at no point was it boring. The Minas Tirth portion of the film was quite good because Denethor is grieving over the death of his favourite son and his grief is turning to madness and when it looks like Faramir has died but he is in fact only unconscious, Denethor decides to burn his body and it takes Gandalf to stop him. As Bernard Hill was the best of the supporting characters in Two Towers, John Noble was the best of the supporting characters in this one. I do wish he had been in more than just this film because he was so good.
The main issue with this film for me is not that it tries to follow The Two Towers but that it doesn't know how to end. There are about three or four different times that it could have ended and this extends the run time when it didn’t need to. This is the longest of the extended editions at over four hours and I will be honest that the last hour or so was when I started to struggle. I think that by the time the ring goes into the lava, there is probably still about 30 minutes left of the film and by this stage of the marathon it was becoming a bit hard to stay focused.
As a film it does what it needs to and that is a fairly major accomplishment. There was so much expectation after the success that the first two were so good that the film achieves this in a satisfactory way. Yes the film could have done with being a little shorter but those issues aside it is still a damn good way to end the trilogy and a good film in its own right. Everyone is in great form and this film and trilogy has shown all the flaws that The Hobbit has. This has probably the same number of central characters but everyone in this film has a purpose and no one feels short changed.
Something that I wasn’t expecting was when people applauded at the end of the film although I don’t know if that was for the film or for all of us (around 80). I did see some people leave just a few minutes from the end, which bearing in mind they had spent 12 hours watching these films seemed like a strange thing to do. I am glad that I did this marathon, I don't know if I would be willing to do this at the cinema or even whether I would do it again at home. Usually I would watch these films over the course of two or three days and now I know there is a good reason for it.
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