Arts & Entertainment

'LOTR' isn't all that terrible

Some praise is due, despite trilogy's many obvious shortcomings

By Andrew Beard
The Daily Cougar

Oscar night was a lonely night for this film buff. As some of you might remember, I wrote an In Focus column titled "Just Say No to The Lord of The Rings," (Nov. 3) in which I proceeded to bash everything hobbit with phrases like "nerd fest" and "nosebleed inducing." So, you can imagine how embarrassing it was to sit and watch LOTR: The Return of the King bat .1000 on Oscar night and go 11 for 11. 

I want a recount on some of these categories. Why did Annie Lennox win for that awful song "Into the West"? The "In Memoriam" segment had more life to it, and is it just me, or does she look a lot like Haley Joel Osment? 

And what about editing? Now, I know the process of editing is more than just the running time of a film, but we're talking about three and a half hours here. It also had three endings. That's a lot of nose bleeding. 

As far as the other categories -- sound mixing, costume design, art direction, etc. -- nobody cares about those anyway. The Oscar voters probably got lazy and just filled in The Return of the King for all the categories on their special Oscar scantrons. Did you notice, however, that no member of the cast was nominated? 

It's because they were all lame. 

Let's face it, the cast of Leave it to Beaver could have carried this film as well as some of the ROTK all-stars, especially Liv Tyler, who acted the strangest at the Oscar podium by repeatedly taking off her glasses and reading the teleprompter in a weird British-whisper voice, and Elijah Wood, who deserved a nomination for ROTK about as much as he deserved one for Flipper. 

The visual effects along with the narrative provided by J.R.R. Tolkien carried the films, not the tiny, tiny cast. It wasn't all garbage, however, there was one credible Oscar win for ROTK, Peter Jackson deserved to walk away as Best Director. 

Yes, this is where I want to take at least part of my foot out of my mouth. This project was possibly the most daunting in film history. He had to film all three epics at the same time in New Zealand, which is apparently not Australia, while keeping the film loyal to all the hobbit loving online blogs and, at the same time, giving an attraction to the mainstream. 

The finished product proved to be a phenomenal success worth over $1 billion worldwide. I'll give credit where credit is due. Peter Jackson is a great filmmaker, and I'm glad he's finished with ROTK and can move on to a movie without Gollum. 

And if you have a Gollum impression, there's still no excuse to try it.

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