Aragorn Washed His Hair
While Frodo saved Middle Earth | Vol. 3 Iss. 7
Have you ever been on a trip, say for somebody’s birthday, and he’s worked so hard to get everybody together and across the whole of Middle Earth, and the group keeps splitting, and everybody’s in all this drama, and then suddenly it’s not even his trip anymore?
Sure, he gets to see the mountains and go on a boat, and hang out with his BFF, which was his whole thing, but really, when you think back on it, you’re like “yeah, but it was Strider’s trip.”
That’s not to say it’s a bad thing! But it was supposed to be Frodo’s birthday trip. And maybe we should all remember that on Aragorn’s birthday next year, when he shows up with his hair all done. And raise a glass for Frodo and Sam.
We’re done. Well, not really. Next blog will be my final thoughts on The Lord of the Rings as it relates to mid-season, below .500 baseball. And some time, when the weather has cooled off and I have a big cozy pot of soup, I will read the battered copy of The Hobbit I bought a few weeks ago.
But after three books and two movies, we have arrived at The Return of the King.
Spoiler warning: Does this have spoilers for all three Lord of the Rings books and films? Yes. Are you allowed to tell me spoilers for other parts of the LotR canon? Please don’t.
All Hail King Strider
Peter Jackson and his team pretty clearly made a choice to make this, and in a way the series, center on Aragorn. This is not the choice I would have made, as I always found Sam and Frodo, as well as Merry and Pippin, to be the beating heart of the series. But Aragorn feels like a much more conventional hero, with his cheekbones and his sword, so I see why the filmmakers decided to go that way.
(In addition to the cheekbones and the sword, Aragorn washed his hair part way through this movie. It didn’t improve his look as much as I thought it would, partly because Viggo Mortensen is just so wildly hot that there wasn’t a lot of room for improvement.)
Making this Aragorn’s movie gave the filmmakers a clear high to go out on - his crowning as king of Gondor. It also gave them a love story, which helps sell movies, even if it really really was not in the book.
My understanding is that the Arwen/Elrond/elf stuff/love story is canonical in that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote appendices to the original books, and a lot of the love story parts of the films come from that. However, I think it probably didn’t make the actual text for a reason.
These books are friendship books and adventure books. They are also really long. Adding in an entire, lengthy plotline about what Arwen and Elrond were up to during the war didn’t add to my enjoyment, especially because it still doesn’t give us any sense of why Arwen and Aragorn love each other or should be together.
In the book, we get to spend more time with Eowyn and her crush on Aragorn. Some of that made it to the movie, but the ending for Eowyn and Faramir didn’t, so it didn’t feel resolved. In either format, I don’t think that romantic love stories are the point of these stories, and even as a romance fan, I think that’s okay.
Given that it becomes Aragorn’s movie, I think Mortensen does great work, especially in his speech to the troops. That speech did reveal that Aragorn has a horse, which makes it absolutely baffling when he charges at the entire forces of Mordor on foot.
Frodo and Sam Forever
The recentering and, relatedly, restructuring of the story naturally moves some of the emphasis away from my favorites, Frodo and Sam. (The restructuring and moving things between Two Towers and Return of the King also puts a higher burden of exposition on this movie, and Gandalf and Gollum in particular, which I think it suffers from.)
There are still some lovely moments between our two best buds. Before Frodo leaves for the Gray Havens he gives Sam a very tender kiss on the head, like you do with your friends. We also get a lingering shot of Frodo at Sam’s wedding, and it certainly would be bittersweet to watch the love of your life marry someone else, even someone with fantastic curly hair.
The thing I missed the most from the Frodo and Sam plot in the books, which is actually in the very end of Two Towers rather than Return of the King, is the moment in which Sam decides to carry on with the quest when he thinks Frodo is dead. The resolve that takes for Sam, and the weight of the decision to take up the ring, both feel like nuanced distillment of the larger story’s message about friendship and fighting to preserve a world for the people we care about. And in the movie it’s replaced by a last second reveal that Sam took the ring when Frodo was in spider food form.
We also lose some nuance, I think, in the portrayal of Gollum and then in the destruction of the ring.
Because of the structural changes to put the spider tunnel into this movie, and because in a movie there’s less room for things to be happening within a character’s head, Gollum’s motivations are explained in another Gollum/Smeagol dual monologue conversation. I think this one is less effective than the previous film, partly because it feels more like an exposition dump than character development.
In contrast, the Smeagol backstory that starts the movie with how he came to have the ring through murder is so effective. (I could have done without watching pre-Gollum Andy Serkis eat a live fish, but so be it, it’s not the only gross eating scene in the movie. I could also have done without the fat phobia. #GollumIs…Cancelled?) The violence of that first murder, even after everything we’ve seen Gollum do, is really shocking, and creates great parallels as we watch the effect of the ring on Frodo. (Parallels, by the way, that are supported by a really fantastic performance from Elijah Wood. They may have made him the second lead in his own movie, but he’s doing a #1 on the call sheet level acting job.)
And then at the destruction of the ring, the movie chose to give Frodo more agency. Overall giving characters agency is a good thing! But I think what’s so incredible about the end of the book is that Frodo was about to fail, but evil destroys itself, ultimately.
Compliments to this section of the movie for its special effects. The spider lair is genuinely creepy and the giant spider looming above Frodo will haunt me forever. (I am not the spider remover of my house. I’m sorry if this is a blow to my otherwise fearless reputation.)
The Ghost of 2004 CGI
In the battle sequence outside the walls of Minas Tirith, the effects start to hold up… less well. The ghost army looks very silly, if I’m honest. The oliphants look great, though watching Legolas climb the ladder of arrows in the oliphant’s leg was unintentionally very funny. There were also swaths of both the bill battle scenes that just felt very green-screeny.
This movie also has to deal with having the hobbits and the human/wizard characters in the same space a lot more than Two Towers did, which leads to a lot of green screen and forced perspective shots, some of which don’t look that great in 2025.
Other than that, a lot of the effects issues are brought on by this being, first and foremost, an action movie. That’s not always my thing, but I think the action is done well, especially given the effects constraints. Action does, however, come with the need to maintain a certain tone of seriousness sometimes punctuated by quips, which puts you in real danger if something feels too silly to fit that tone.
Which brings us to the King of the Nazgul. In the book, Merry and Eowyn killing him is so badass. These two characters who have been told they shouldn’t be fighting getting out there and saving the day was incredible.
But in the movie, to have him say “No man can kill me,” and then the answer is that a woman can? It feels a little “I was from my mother’s womb untimely ripped” technicality to me, when the moment should be about Eowyn. And then the King of the Nazgul dies like somebody took the air out of a balloon, and the moment just feels like it’s over.
The tone of the battle sequences works the best when the battle pauses for just a moment and Pippin expresses his fear that they’re all going to die, and Gandalf explains Middle Earth’s concept of death and heaven, and then, with a sad twinkle in his eye, says that it doesn’t sound so bad. Ian McKellan is, hot take, a great actor! He also could have been a wonderful Dumbledore if the casting die fell another way and given that series’ “death is but the next great adventure,” speech. But as it is, this was one of my favorite moments of the movie. (Also, give a quick google search for “Ian McKellan young,” because he used to be so handsome!)
Why did this win Best Picture?
I enjoyed this movie. There were some great moments and great performances. It wraps up the series well, and it holds up in both effects and story.
However, I am baffled as to how it won the Oscar for Best Picture. Surely, I thought, this must have been a real dry year at the cinema.
But no!
Whale Rider came out this year! Finding Nemo came out this year! In a different kind of category but still somewhat similar to Return of the King, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out this year.
I’m always surprised when something that isn’t a straight drama wins Best Picture (I was so surprised at how funny Anora is!), and in particular it’s surprising when a genre pick wins. I would argue the Academy should award a lot more comedies and wider range of stories, including fantasy and sci-fi.
But this isn’t even the best movie in this series! That award, for me, would go to Fellowship of the Ring. I saw While Rider one time nearly 20 years ago and the feeling of it still sticks with me. And Finding Nemo is about as pure as storytelling gets. Could folks in 2004 have known what would hold up? No, and it’s not their job to. But still.
I suspect this was a case of good will towards the series overall. Lots of voters probably grew up with these books. The movies were huge box office successes and they were doing incredible work for the time on the CGI front. And that goodwill turned into votes, even if the movie itself isn’t the kind of pitch perfect storytelling I’d try to vote for if it were my job.
Assorted Treasures
This movie has, and I shouldn't be surprised at this point, kind of a lot of singing! The singing decreased over the three books but it was back in force here, including songs that I don’t think were even in the book.
The poor Steward of Gondor. This guy knows he’s about to get fired, Gandalf is yelling at him that there’s not enough time to mourn his dead son, and the hair department gave him a weird messed up wig. And then, because this film wasn’t long enough, the director came to this poor, beleaguered actor, and said “we need you to eat cherry tomatoes in the grossest way possible,” and trooper that he was, he did it.
What Else?
Reading
I’m two thirds through with Phyllis Rose’s book Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages in which she goes blow by blow through the courtship, marriage, and in some cases separation of five literary adjacent couples from the 1800s. It is fascinating. Most of these people shouldn’t have been married to each other or at all. It has everything. Age gaps, long distance, your best friend burned the only copy of your manuscript on the French revolution but you’re just glad he hasn’t eloped with another man’s wife. Gossip from a hundred and sixty years ago is still gossip, and I love it. Plus, apparently when Charles Dickens separated from his wife he wrote the first ever notes app “we have nothing but love and respect for each other, please respect our privacy at this time” statement and published it in his own magazine, making people gossip about whether he was sleeping with a 19 year old actress even more.
Planting
Sunshine and spring rain are doing wonders for my garden. One of the herb pots isn’t really participating so I might try some new seeds or buy another pepper plant seedling, but other than that I’m very pleased. Look how big they’ve gotten!
Running
This was actually right before the last newsletter but I forgot. I ran in a race! It was 3 miles and it rained the entire time. At the end I got a free banana and this medal, which looks great on Roxie.
