After an incredibly exhausting and insanity-filled weekend, my roommates and I decided that a perfect way to relax would be to grab some popcorn and put in Return of the King. I was pretty excited about this idea - I hadn't seen any of the LotRs in years and was looking forward to some mind-blowing cinematography, epic SFX battles, and pretty, pretty men.
I fell asleep an hour into it.
Okay, so it was kind of late when we started watching (9:30ish) and I was pretty tired to begin with (beach all day, not much sleep the previous night, food coma/pregnancy). But still...gah! How could I have fallen asleep? This was Lord of the Rings!! This was my life in high school. I am not exaggerating here, people.
I still remember watching it for the first time in theaters with my BFF at the Rio. We had been talking about the movie nonstop for months and were literally shaking with excitement as we waited in line with other crazy fans. When the movie started playing, I sat there with my mouth hung open the entire time. I was just in awe of everything. The scenes were so epic, the effects so convincing, and the dialogue so moving. I'm fairly sure I cried when it was over*. For three years these movies had been such a huge part of my life.
But this time around, everything just fell flat. The movie was just one epic scene after another to the point where the epic-ness became diluted and I got incredibly bored. Yay the Rohans have arrived! Boo the archers are killing their horses with arrows. Yay the horses prevail anyway and stomp all over Orcs! Boo oliphaunts are here and an ugly man is blowing an exotic horn. Yay Eomer throws a spear at him! Boo Shelob. Yay Sam! Boo Witch King. Yay Gandalf! Etc etc etc. People diss Michael Bay's blockbuster kamikaze mayhems all the time but Return of the King wasn't all that dissimilar from Transformers, now that I really think about it...
A lot of the dialogue sounded awful and cheesy too, like it was out of some 14 year old's fanfiction. It all sounded so silly and over the top. I also found myself asking questions to myself the entire time. Why the heck didn't they just make the eagles drop the Ring in the first place? They retrieved Frodo and Sam in like 2 seconds and even gave them a nice view of the collapsing Mordor skyline - they could've easily given them a lift there, right? Also why didn't anyone think of fixing Anduril until now? Its shards were on display in Rivendell for thousands of years and it would've been pretty damn useful for Aragorn in the first two movies. And how did Elrond deliver it to Aragorn in negative five seconds when Aragorn had been traveling for months? Most importantly, why is Legolas still wearing a skirt and saying dumb shit?? Does natural selection not exist in Middle-Earth? So many plotholes, so little sense.
I'm sad that I couldn't sit through this movie and enjoy it the way I used to. I couldn't even tolerate some scenes (mostly the vom-inducing dialogues between Pippin and Gandalf) because they were so long and drawn out. I'm also pretty sure that not enjoying Return of the King marks my transformation into a raging and worldly cynic. My future looks so bleak right now.
* Stop your snickering.
speaking of oliphaunts, you should see the perfect getaway, with Timothy Olyphant, he is such a badass in that movie... also the eagles only came after the orcs were dead, or else they could've been shot down or something, and thirdly, you've changed, and I can't tell if it's a good change, like yeah I thought you were stupid in high school for being so obsessed with LOTR, but it's still a pretty good trilogy, and I know lots of scenes can be drawn out, but that's part of what being epic is all about... anyway I've been watching a lot of movies this summer, and some I thought were so dumb even though my friends mostly liked them, so I decided to try suspending disbelief, and accepting the movie for what it was, and somehow I thoroughly enjoyed GI Joe, probably because I thought it was gonna be really stupid... actually I think I might've just been in an emotional mood because I didn't cry per se, but I got that tingly feeling and almost choked up during that move somehow.... this is anonymous right?
ReplyDeleteAhhhh I was reading this with Phil and giggling like an idiot. I felt the same way! I couldn't believe that I wasn't as into it the other night as I was back in the day. When I first watched it I was so impressed with how epic and noble everything was that I wished I could live in Middle Earth because people there had purpose, it was good vs. evil in a big way. In middle school the closest thing I had to an evil orc was the weird kid who shot snot rockets at the back of the bus and my biggest decisions were how soon I was going to get my homework done.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I think everything seems kind of cheesy when you just dive in with RotK, it'd be the same as watching New Moon without having gotten used to the ridiculousness with Twilight, feel me? We should watch the first one and restore your faith in the series.
<3 special K