The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King - Extended Edition - Blu-ray Review

'An encounter with a large spider means that the hobbit rivals Princess Peach for the amount of times he's needed saving.'

Two hours. At the start of the final battle in The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King there is still over two hours for the extended version of the film to run. What follows is what nearly happened to Fellowship and what Two Towers so ably side-stepped: a huge bout of third act time-wasting.

The war elephants look good, there's obviously a lot of very well directed action and the conclusion of several character's stories is, eventually, well handled. But there's just no real reason for spending two hours on it. Peter Jackson, apparently reluctant to leave Middle Earth, ponders and ponders, extending the finale to a paceless tramp through battle-hardened scenes we've seen elsewhere. This may have been the film The Academy chose to reward, but it is the worst of the series.

Hitherto the focus of the films, Frodo (Elijah Wood) is increasingly marginalised, as Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) takes centre stage. Is this a problem? Well, Aragorn was the focus for much of Two Towers, so it's arguable that it's not but equally, something is off here. Where in the previous film, Frodo still had terrain to navigate and Gollum to deal with, here it feels like Jackson is just playing for time. An encounter with a large spider means that the hobbit rivals Princess Peach for the amount of times he's needed saving.

Meanwhile, Aragorn, marauding adventurer, gets stuck behind some walls. For two hours. The onslaught at Minas Tirith may have the scale, but it lacks the dynamics of Helm's Deep. It is, admittedly, a tough act to follow, but Return Of The King occasionally gets so turgid it feels uninspired. Before that, Mortensen enlists the help of a band of un-dead assistants  who firstly invade a mercenary naval fleet, thus ill-advisedly calling to mind Pirates Of The Caribbean.

There's still good work here, of course there is, and The Return Of The King is by no means a bad film. But this is the first time, in nearly twelve hours in the company of this trilogy, that I have felt bored and lost, like I have been abandoned by Jackson to wander the plains of Middle Earth by myself, observing the land's happenings.