Return of the King: voyage into the fantastic

Forget storyline, characters, dialogue, and plot. Forget acting, fighting, stunts, and special effects. In fact, simply bundle up everything commonly associated with good movies and toss it out the nearest window. Because none of that is what makes Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy so extraordinary.

What director Peter Jackson has done with Lord of the Rings is create literally an entire world, transport his audience there, and for three hours make them forget their reality. Middle Earth exists far beyond its two-dimensional appearance on screen. It has texture, smell, culture, and an emotional pull that is both tangible and completely irresistible. Earth simply pales and fades into the background compared to the rich world Jackson and his team have concocted. And all of the exquisitely detailed sets, sweeping 360-degree cinematography, and handcrafted armor serve a single purpose: to make sure that while you watch Return of the King, nothing is more important to you than the fate of the hobbit Frodo and the destruction of the Ring of Power.

Lord of the Rings simply has the best production value of any movie ever released, and Return of the King plays to this strength, whisking viewers away to more exotic, terrifying, majestic, dark, and varied locations than in either of the other two films, especially Two Towers, which centered heavily on one place. Though Return of the King is slow to get going and, being the third installment in a trilogy, feels less fresh than its predecessors, once it finds its momentum, it's a tour de force to be reckoned with.

As all viewers who have seen Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers know (and if you haven't, much of this film will be completely incomprehensible), Return of the King follows hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) and their twisted guide Gollum (Andy Serkis) into Mordor, the land of Sauron, the evil, disembodied nemesis of all things good. Frodo carries Sauron's greatest weapon, the Ring of Power, which he seeks to destroy in Mount Doom, a volcano at the heart of Mordor.

Several reasons account for why the film feels a bit slow at the beginning. First, it begins with a flashback, which obviously doesn't move the plot forward. But watching Smeagol, a hobbity creature, morph into Gollum, a schizophrenic sociopath, lends depth to his character by giving Gollum the past that was missing in the Two Towers.

Further slowing down the beginning is the necessary reuniting of the other scattered members of the original Fellowship. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the returning King of men, the elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), dwarf Gimili (John Rhys-Davies), and wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) find the remaining hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd). Gandalf takes Pippin to Minas Tirith, mankind's capital, and gets the plot going.

The movie ignites with a beautiful sequence that follows the lighting of signal towers across Middle Earth, beginning at Minas Tirith, as Gandalf calls for aid in defending the city. The camera sours through mountains and ravines, across vivid, sweeping vistas as the fires are lit. Armies of both good and evil are set in motion, and the all-consuming war at Minas Tirith begins.

Both before and after Sauron's forces attack Minas Tirith, Jackson maintains a quick flow by skipping between his multiple principle characters much more rapidly than he has done in past films. These quick transitions also create the sense that events are inevitably converging on the film's climax, and Jackson expertly builds the audience's anticipation up until that point.

However, some of the transitions are rougher than necessary and seem jarring. For example, after much of the Fellowship is reunited, Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn's army throw a party- one of the rare and welcome clips of natural hobbit behavior away from war and terror. Meanwhile, Aragorn and Gandalf ponder deeper things, but their conversation seems forced and out of place in the lively atmosphere.

Minas Tirith is one of the most memorable locations Jackson visits. It's intricately detailed, blazingly white, and teeming with both military and civilian life. But one of the best sets is Minas Morgul, a ghost town at the edge of Mordor that was glimpsed in Fellowship. Done in slimy hues of green and blue and with a decidedly twisted, vertical style of architecture, Minas Morgul is a breathtakingly creepy domain.

As developed as the sets are, the characters show similar attention to depth, more so than in Two Towers, which only developed the characters superficially as it prepared them for their upcoming battles. That Return of the King includes incredible growth of characters in between the spectacular battle sequences is one of its best features. The hobbits in particular are given new dimensions. Their expansion, especially that of Merry and Pippin, is aided by new character pairings and situations. Merry and Pippin learn how to fare without each other for the first time and essentially grow up. Sam is thrown into a position of authority when the Ring compromises Frodo's sanity.

Special accolades must go to both Astin and Wood for maintaining the intensity of the journey and the hobbits' abject desperation. They have the acting abilities to pull of the archaic Tolkien dialogue. That Frodo can say melodramatic lines like "I'm glad you're with me, Sam, here at the end of all things" without the least trace of self-consciousness is a tribute to the original books and enlivens the otherworldly feel of Middle Earth.

Unfortunately, some characters are not developed as completely as in the books. Denethor (John Noble), the steward of Minas Tirith, has been particularly mistreated. Jackson sets him up as power-hungry and insane, whereas the reasons for his erratic and irrational behavior go much deeper in Tolkien- his mind has been overthrown by Sauron, though he still has the city's best interests at heart, something ignored in the film. As a result, his funeral pyre, one of the emotional climaxes of the book, falls flat in the cinematic rendition because we cannot sympathize with his character.

Not even superior acting and characters compare to the emotion wrought on the viewer by composer Howard Shore's score. It soars, it descends, it winds, it builds, it follows every move of every character, enhancing the race of a battle charge with an uplifting melody, highlighting the desperation of a suicide mission with haunting singing (courtesy of Boyd), creating tension with heavy drumbeats during an invasion. The music welds so perfectly with Middle Earth that it's impossible to separate one from the other: it's as much a part of that world as the rock of Minas Tirith.

Though the many battle scenes surpass those of prior movies, parts of Return of the King are stale and rehashed. We are treated to yet another conversation between Gollum and himself, but this one is much less riveting because we've seen it before in Two Towers. Aragorn makes stirring speeches to his armies, but once again, he's rallied troops before, and we really just want the movie to move on. Jackson should have either attempted to introduce a new side to the repetitive situations or simply cut them altogether.

But for the most part it is a joy to return to these characters and their struggles. Hobbits, humans, elves, dwarves—each race is as distinct as the various locations of Middle Earth, and the completeness of that world and time makes The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King a film that you don't just watch, but one you experience.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and frightening images.