The Lord of the Rings Re-Watched

Years ago (yes, it has been that long) I had a habit of spending the holiday season watching the Extended Edition of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. There’s something like 15 hours worth of material there, so it keeps one occupied when there is nothing worth watching on TV and you are somewhat too sozzled to do any work. However, it has been a while. This year I decided to go back to it and see whether the films still stood up.

From a technical point of view I think some of the green screen work is now a bit obvious. Back when the films came out this tech was all very new and we were gob-smacked at how good it was. These days it looks a little shoddy. Hopefully that doesn’t spoil the viewing experience for modern-day kids.

As to the film-making, it is clear now that the seeds of all the things that made the Hobbit movies so bad were already there in the LotR films. Many of the action scenes were obviously ridiculous when the films came out, and I said so in my reviews at the time. For all of its emotional power, the Rohirrim charge down an almost vertical slope covered in loose scree is one of the most absurd things I have ever seen in a movie.

Weirdly, something that stood out was Arwen’s orange lipstick in the first movie. I’m not sure that we can blame Liv Tyler for this. I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a fashion for it at the time. Certainly I have a MAC lipstick in almost the same shade that I have had for years and hardly ever used.

Something that I did not remember was the look on Elrond’s face when Aragorn and Arwen get to kiss at the end. It is priceless. Well done, Hugo Weaving.

The Gollum/Sméagol scenes are still very effective, and obviously I have a soft spot for Éowyn dispatching the Witch King, but I had not remembered how frightened Éowyn is shown to be throughout most of the battle. It is almost as if the film wants to suggest that her brother was right and she should not have been there.

Of course most of the power of the films still comes from Tolkien, but the impact is very different now. Tolkien wrote the books during and immediately after the Second World War. In that time, mankind faced up to an existential threat and, through great sacrifice, made it through. The world was looking forward to a new era of peace and prosperity.

Viewing those films now, at a time when our world is once again staring down the barrel of war, with no guarantee of a successful outcome, they hit very differently. We all wish that we had not been born into these times, Mr Frodo, but we were, and now we have no choice but to play our part.