The importance of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy cannot be overstated. After the unprecedented theatrical run of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King, an entire genre was never the same. The movies weren’t just a good adaptation. you were THE adaptation. This is what fantasy was supposed to look like that was the gold standard by which everything was measured. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a chess genius or a jock, everyone wanted to live in Middle-earth.
To this day I regularly treat myself to a Lord of the Rings marathon and enjoy every scene. I especially love the peaceful Shire, the autumn realms of Rivendell, the mines of Moria. The journey through Rohan Steppes, Dead Marshes, the White City and finally Mordor – really everything is perfect. But
at the end
I’m completely out of my skin with anger.
Frodo’s decision in The Lord of the Rings finale makes me extremely angry
Actually, everything is great in the finale too: Sauron has been destroyed, his kingdom lies in rubble and (new) ashes. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) is king, Arwen (Liv Tyler) stays with him. Rohan and Gondor get along. The people have won. And most importantly, ring-bearer Frodo (Elijah Wood) and companion Sam (Sean Astin) survive the brutal journey against all odds and return to the Shire.
Then Frodo takes off forever because a stab wound sometimes hurts him.
WHAT?
At the very end of the third film accompanies Frodo the elves on their journey to the Immortal Lands, that only a select few can enter. And from which there is no return. Sam and the other hobbit companions stand in disbelief on the jetty and can’t believe their eyes. They are like me there.
Check out the Lord of the Rings scene here:
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Frodo should pull himself together after 10 hours of The Lord of the Rings
The justification that Frodo and the film provide for the surprising decision is a tepid breath of nothing. Four years have passed since he was wounded with a Morghul blade, the ex-ring bearer explains, but the wound has never fully healed. He can never go back, he ponders beforehand. He feeds his companion Sam with the words “The Shire was saved. But not for me” away. This explanation borders on an insolence.
Didn’t Sam, Merry or Pippin suffer any trauma? Sam was dragging Frodo through Mordor, after all. But instead of going off with the elves, he starts over in the Shire and marries the innkeeper! They all stand like idiots at the Gray Havens, holding the shards of their hearts in their hands.
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Frodo says goodbye to Sam
The Lord of the Rings finale is better told in JRR Tolkien’s books
JRR Tolkien’s original book actually provides a more comprehensive explanation for the decision: Wearing the ring left deep marks on Frodo. Like Bilbo (Ian Holm) and Sméagol (Andy Serkis) before him, Frodo is on the brink of insanity. The Morghul wound and his memories torment him almost constantly. Only in the Undying Lands can he be freed from his pain.
In the template, the development is consistent. For three books, Tolkien described the epidemic evil of Mordor with all his eloquence, so a run-of-the-mill happy ending is simply inappropriate. Perhaps the author also wanted to deal with the fate of his generation during the First World War, which, as Erich Maria Remarque writes in Nothing New in the West, “was destroyed by the war, even if it escaped its shells.“
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With this expression on his face, Frodo bids farewell to his companions.
In the theatrical version, you can’t feel any of that. Peter Jackson may have been under a lot of time pressure or was just a little blind by now, but Frodo’s farewell is told far too thinly. For almost 10 hours I feared and suffered and screamed and cried so that you would survive in the end, Frodo, and all this for a few kitschy half-sentences that explain next to nothing? It gets me down every time.
In the end, every single Lord of the Rings film remains a masterpiece, including the third. In the end, my nagging consists only of a small criticism of Jackson. Perhaps my reaction is proof of his extraordinary achievement: like hardly any other director, he gave me heroes that I can’t let go of at the end.
Podcast for series fans: 13 fantasy highlights starting this year on Netflix, Disney+ and more
Netflix, Disney+, Amazon and Co. have several exciting fantasy series in the starting blocks for the coming months. Whether ghost detectives, German myths with villainous heroes or the real-life anime series for One Piece and Avatar: We present the next 13 highlights to you.
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Alongside The Witcher season 3, the angel-devil duo from Good Omens are also returning to the stream for a season 2 after four years. You can also discover a few promising fantasy series that you probably haven’t heard of until now.
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