READ ONLY IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE: SPOILER, SPOILER!!!
I noticed while I was exiting the theater, many were asking why Frodo wen on the ship with the elfs. Well the reason is that the elfs are going to the undying lands. Since the 3 rings of power the elfs held now lost their power after the destruction of the one ring, they have to go there to survive.
Frodo is going with them since Arwen had given her immortality to him in the first movie after he was stabbed by the witch king.
And yes, I loved every minute of this movie, only my butt reminded me that I had sat there for more than 3 hours already, It just went by so fast.
You come out of a movie as grand and as momentous as "The return of the King" more than a bit drained. You don't quite know where to begin, what to talk about first, who to praise the most. So, you end up sounding like Jack Nicholson at the end of "The Pledge," muttering incoherently because you are just so darn overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.
My best advice is to just soak it all in, my friends. Soak it in and savor it. Stay for the entire closing credits. Don't have anything to drink during it (the film runs three hours and 20 minutes). This is not a normal movie where you just get up from it, head to the car
or the subway, and contemplate your next meal. This is a truly remarkable and special achievement in cinema that will very likely never come again. I mean, really. Let's take a real moment here.
We are living in a time when "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is playing on the big screen to audiences for the first time ever. These films will outlive us, as "Gone With the Wind," "The Wizard of Oz," and "Ben-Hur" are outliving their original participants and their original audiences.
Since seeing it myself, I aksed myslef "Do I think it will win the Oscar? Is it the best film of 2003?" To that, I can only say hat "The Lord of the Rings" films exist outside of cinema for this viewer. I can't adequately judge this amazing and truly special achievement in comparison to more conventional, albeit strongly deserving films like "Mystic River."
The trilogy is just something you set aside from everything else and say, "OK, there are movies, and then there is 'The Lord of the Rings.'"
