Yes, I know… No entry for yesterday. Give me a break… I double posted for the last few days before that, right? Anyway, I was busy installing some new hardware in my work machine, and then we headed off for the huge movie get together, so by the time I was thinking of posting yesterday it was already almost today…
So.
Return of the King. Not a bad movie…
There were ten of us who went to the 7:30 Michigan Theatre show. There are places that may have bigger screens or more comfortable seats, but the whole movie palace atmosphere of the place makes up for a lot of these shortcomings. Plus I’m a member, so I get tickets at a discount.
My wife and I had the tickets for the group, so we’d arranged to meet people before the show at the Starbucks down the street. A vanguard of the five earliest arrivals got into line to save seats for the later folks. When it was down to just one unclaimed ticket, I dispatched the others as reinforcements while I waited outside to round up the straggler. I kind of wish the vanguard had picked closer seats, but with the house as packed as it was, I’m sure it was tough to get a block of ten together.
The movie is big. Damn big. Big cities, big towers, big armies, big elephants, big spiders, big rocks being thrown through the air by big siege engines, big battering rams smashing down big doors to let big trolls through… Big big big. Just keep saying the word ‘big’ over and over until it stops making sense, then switch to ‘huge’ or a similar synonym.
And loud. Everyone on screen cringes and covers their ears when one of the Black Riders’ dragon worm things makes that awful howling sound, and so does everyone in the theatre. I’m not sure if that’s part of the movie or just because the Michigan had their sound system turned up too loud…
Good? Well, my mental jury is still out a bit on that. I keep reminding myself that the movie is not the book and that there’s no way that everyone could be happy with the changes that Peter Jackson had to make. I can see dropping scene “X” for time, or rearranging things for dramatic effect in the film version, but then there are changes that he made that just puzzle me… I’m not going to get into spoilerville here, so no specifics.
If you want to read a good review of it, check out the one at AngryFlower.com. He’s got one of the best summations of the whole Lord of the Rings experience:
We’ve seen the other two films in theatrical and extended DVD release and each time it’s clear that the extended version is the true film, and that in comparison the theatrical version is a hard, cut-to-the-plot, slam-bam blockbuster version of the movie that lacks the important character and pacing material of the real thing. Really, the film that’s in theatres now is a 3 1/2 hour trailer for the real movie, the extended edition, and when it comes that 4 1/2 hour movie will feel warmer, funnier, deeper, realer, stronger, more beautiful and *shorter* than the theatrical version.?