I went to see The Return of the King tonight and it had an effect on me. It made my coffee taste better.  I loved Fellowship, but it didn’t add up to the book. I loved The Two Towers, and it tied the book. But Return of the King is a genuine improvement on the original book.

Not that Jackson added things that rivaled the genius of Tolkien, but he went through the book with a highlighter and streamlined the epic so that the emotions come through clearer and it hit me over the head like a Dwarven hammer.  Return has a brilliant way of contrasting innocence and beauty with overt power and truly ugly acts. The theme is set up with a beautiful documentation of Smeagol’s brutal journey beginning with a fishing trip with Deagol. Jackson sets up this premise with simple whimsical country folk who go from fishing on a lush pond to brutal murder.

But unlike other movies that house awful brutality, Return contextualizes it in a way that makes it in no way gratuitous. I contrast this film with steaming turds of post-modernity like Kill Bill and Matrix Revolutions. All three films are loaded with battles, heroes and darkness, but Return gives them something real to fight for friendship, family and the meek who confound the intelligent elite who corner the market on overt power.

All of my movie-lovin’ friends drooled over Kill Bill, and Return will embarrass anyone who attributed any post Pulp Fiction greatness to Tarantino. The curtain of Matrix Revolutions is pulled back and we find out that Neo may not even exist. Spoon-bending and questioning reality is not the things heroes are made of.

Editor's Note: This Review was not written by the dtheatre staff and may not reflect the views thereof.  Dig?