November 19, 2003. Copyright, 2003, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Return of the King concludes Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
By Mark Samms

LONDON, November 19, Graphic News:  The old adage says that you get out of something what you put into it. 

Director, producer and co-writer, Peter Jackson, invested several years of his life and every ounce of his creative and commercial acumen in bringing The Lord of the Rings to the screen. He has been rewarded with a tumultuous trilogy which has had critics ransacking their thesauruses to do it justice. 

The first two films achieved that rare double in the movie industry -- artistic acclaim and financial success -- winning six Oscars, albeit in the minor categories, and combined box office receipts approaching $1.8 billion. 

It seems certain that The Return of the King, which has its premiere in New Zealand on December 1, will provide more of the same. 

It is well known that Jackson filmed the three movies simultaneously in less than a year. However, this final installment, like The Two Towers, which dominated the Christmas box office last year, was honed and burnished with additional scenes completed just a few months before its release. 

He has demanded similar dedication from his stars. Actors Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom and Sean Bean underwent intensive training in horse-riding and sword-fighting as well as getting themselves into top physical condition to keep up with the hectic 274-day filming schedule. Other stars had to learn Elvish, a tongue specially created for the films by dialect and creative language coaches and taught to the actors as if it were a real language. 

It was this attention to detail -- as well as the use of sumptuous locations in the heart of JacksonÕs New Zealand homeland -- that had critics drooling and will once again have cinemas heaving as TolkienÕs epic tale reaches its stunning conclusion. 

However, it will do so without the malevolent presence of the evil wizard Saruman, played by Christopher Lee. In an astonishing move that Lee says he first heard about via the internet, all his scenes have been excised from the final part of the trilogy, with no explanation forthcoming from Jackson.

Lee himself, who once said that appearing in The Lord of the Rings had been Òa dream come trueÓ, refused to comment further because of a confidentiality agreement, but his fans have already launched an online petition to get the scenes restored.

But when it comes to special effects, Jackson has pulled out all the stops. The biggest battle is understood to feature more than 200,000 digitally-manufactured warriors, and the company responsible for the effects had to build an extra room on to its premises to house the computer equipment required to produce the scenes. 

No doubt Jackson and the hordes of passionate LOTR aficionados throughout the world will be hoping that the concluding part of his monumental opus will finally be rewarded with the major Oscars that have so far eluded him.

Release dates 

Dec 1: New Zealand (premiere) 
Dec 17: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA 
Dec 18: Israel, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore 
Dec 19: Thailand, Turkey 
Dec 25: Brazil, Colombia 
Dec 26: Australia, Iceland 
Jan 1: Argentina, Poland 
Jan 2: Estonia 
Jan 8: Hungary, Slovenia 
Jan 10: Bulgaria 
Jan 15: Czech Republic 
Jan 22: Italy