As I revealed to the world when I wrote about The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring two years ago, I am one of perhaps five people of my generation who never read J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy. In some circles, this is tantamount to admitting that you spent the 1960's as president of the Young Republicans Club; in other circles, it's an admission that you're at best a cynic and at worst an idiot so entrenched in this particular level of reality that you are unable to deal with names and universes with which you're not readily familiar. To this last, at least, I plead guilty.

Cartoonist Bill Amend, whose FoxTrot comic strip always expertly manages to capture in four frames the zen of such cinematic phenomena as Peter Jackson's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, reveals in his series on THE RETURN OF THE KING the proprietary interest that Tolkien's fans and followers take in this story. In its December 19 strip, Jason, the fantasy/sci fi geek of the family insists, "The 'Lord of the Rings' films are for people like ME to love! WE memorized the books. WE made the Web sites! WE drew the detailed maps of Osgiliath on our binders!" and frets to his mother a day later, "What if everyone thinks it's great? What if being a 'Lord of the Rings' fanatic becomes, you know....mainstream!?"

Deal with it, Jason, because many of us in the mainstream DO think it's great.

Rare is the story that develops its characters so thoroughly, and makes you care about them so much that you don't want their story to end, nor do you want to let them go. In crafting Tolkien's painstaking prose into a three-part cinematic event spanning as many years, Jackson has made the struggle of the denizens of Middle Earth mainingful to the mainstream while not compromising the story's appeal to the faithful. And in doing so, he has managed to accomplish what no one else has dared: created the great epic film of our time. While The Fellowship of the Ring astonished with its beauty, its pitch-perfect casting and its almost surgical excision of all That Which Does Not Move the Story Along; and The Two Towers revitalized the cinematic battle scene and brought CGI to a new level with the creation of Gollum, THE RETURN OF THE KING takes all of the elements introduced by the first two films and takes them to an intensely emotional and satisfying conclusion.

I can only imagine what those who have grown up with their much-read copies of Tolkien's books have felt at seeing the places of their imaginations come to life; the art nouveau mountain-resort-on-mushrooms serenity of Rivendell; the Tower of Babel that is the "city of kings", Minas Tirith; the huge, sweeping vistas of Middle Earth that readers have seen in their minds for years, now made flesh -- yes, flesh, for the Middle Earth depicted by Peter Jackson, with New Zealand in an award-caliber performance, is as vibrantly alive (and at times as painfully dying) as the characters fighting their epic battle both on and beneath its surface. About an hour into the film, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) sends Pippin (Billy Boyd) to climb a tower to light a huge beacon as a signal to the reluctant king of the title, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) that the time has come to lead the riders of Rohan to battle. The camera pans backwards and upwards in a swooping motion, to reveal a huge expanse of mountainous terrain, made even more astonishing because we know it's real. As the camera sweeps past, we see tiny flares appear on each peak, as the signal makes its way to its destination. Twenty years from now, when film schools offer courses in epic filmmaking, this scene will be Exhibit A, right next to the shot of Omar Sharif riding in from the sunset in Lawrence of Arabia in the annals of Breathtaking Epic Moments.

And yet the power of the film lies in the way Jackson has matured as a filmmaker, trusting his story, his cinematographer, and his actors to convey a story of this size in a small and intimate manner. The Nazgul dead city of Minas Morgul, a massive green-glowing edifice that looks like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher's dream church and a failed World Trade Center design and the seemingly endless stairs of Cirith Ungol are the stage on which Smeagol's betrayal of Frodo and Frodo's betrayal of Sam play out. Minas Tirith is a Tower of Babel stuck against a huge cliff in the middle of a huge flat plain, but within it Faramir (David Wenham) -- the Designated Family Shithead in the eyes of his father Denethor (John Noble) -- his eyes red from the sting of paternal rejection, rides off slowly with his soldiers to certain death in a futile defense of the city of Osgiliath as women dejectedly toss already-dried flowers in their path, in a kind of pre-emptive funeral march. And as the battle takes place, that most goofball of hobbits, Pippin, matures before our eyes in one of the most devastating commentaries on war ever put on film. His mournful song, sung in a clear and plaintive voice while the deranged Denathor eats gluttonously, the juice from tomatoes dribbling down his chin like blood, intercuts with shots of the men of Gondor being slaughtered. And after the journey's end (the scouring of the Shire having been excised from this telling of the story), when the hobbits once again gather at the Red Dragon pub for a draught, we know without them saying a word that they all realize that for all that everything around looks the same, nothing will ever again be as it was.

It's no secret that Peter Jackson is enamored of battle scenes, and while we know from watching the many "making of..." specials on these films that these battles were actually twenty-five costumed guys repeated endlessly, Jackson achieves a fluidity and a continuity in his battle scenes that are rarely seen in films today. In films such as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, battles are portrayed as a series of short-cuts, visually confusing, headache-inducing, and as staccato as a music video. Battle is a series of indiviedual confrontations, and Jackson plays each one through, as intricately and fluidly choreographed as a ballet. As a result, the battle scenes seem more real and less dependent on CGI whiz-bang.

The very complexity of Tolkien's story necessitates following as many as four separate story lines at once, and Jackson's script structures these storylines into a single vortex, each building in its own ominous way for the simultaneous final confrontation of Frodo with himself at Mount Doom and the battle of the Black Gate. Because of this ominous build towards an equally ominous conclusion, THE RETURN OF THE KING is the most emotionally exhausting of the three films, but the director mercifully gives a precious few moments of levity, most of them provided by John Rhys-Davies' Gimli, who perhaps sums up the film best: "Certainty of death....small chance of success.....What are we waiting for?"

Yes, the technical details are spectacular, and largely seamless, even though we now know so much of how it all was done. But as we know from the recent Star Wars prequels, all the technology in the world can't substitute for character development, and here the actors in Jackson's repertory company inhabit their characters so fully that we forget we're watching actors. For the first time, the brilliant Andy Serkis, whose facial expressions and body movements created the character of Gollum far more than the technicians did, appears on screen in a flashback that opens the film, showing us how Smeagol came into possession of the ring. While I suspect that this sequence, which somehow feels slapped on, exists for the sole purpose of giving the MPAA something on which to hang a richly deserved Academy Award nomination for Serkis, it's nevertheless devastating in its portrayal of the ring as the meanest addictive substance ever.

Viggo Mortensen, an actor who always always seemed to me to be half-asleep as he mumbles his line, gradually peels away Aragorn's reluctance to assert the leadership role he must. Though with a brave, fine, and bonny lass like Eowyn (Miranda Otto) out there slaughtering the king of the Nazgul, one must wonder what he sees in the whiny, always weeping Arwen (Liv Tyler), who has some fabulous gowns to wear, but as portrayed in these films, seems to be far more high-maintenance than a busy fellow like Aragorn is going to have time to handle.

THE RETURN OF THE KING is where the hobbits truly come into their own. The mischievous Merry (Dominic Monaghan), who began to understand the gravity of the battle brewing in The Two Towers, emerges as a warrior of great heart. Billy Boyd, as Pippin, not only wrote the song his character sings so movingly over the battle of Osgiliath, but delivers a marvelously subtle performance as his character finally outgrows the silly hobbit-boy he has been up to this point. Elijah Wood's Frodo, who had little to do in The Two Towers other than look terrified, begins to resemble Gollum more than ever here, and in his Big Climactic Scene, we see a side of this angelic-looking boy that I would not have dreamed possible. Wood is so born to play Frodo that this talented young actor, who has been onscreen since he was a toddler, may find himself struggling to escape the hobbit's shadow. But perhaps the most accolades should be bestowed on Sean Astin, whose Samwise Gamgee is perhaps the least complex of hobbits. Sam is loyal, honest, and true, but as the third wheel in the growing and dangerous bond between Frodo and Smeagol, and with the latter's Gollum nature taking over, everything he has always believed true becomes sorely tested. No longer Sancho Panza to Frodo's Don Quixote, he's more akin to a guardian angel. And yet, when Sam, having saved Frodo's life yet again, stands on the side of Mount Doom against a flame-red sky, and says "I can't carry the ring....but I can carry you!", it's a moment at once heroic and unabashedly cornball. But you won't even care that your heart is being manipulated; in fact, by that point, you'd serve it up to Jackson on a silver platter with fava beans and a nice chianti if he asked.

THE RETURN OF THE KING is not without its flaws, but it would be churlish to inflate them to the point of detriment to an achievement of this magnitude. Eowyn's ride among the legs of the giant elephants at the Battle of Pelennor Fields looks every bit the green-screen creation that it is; and John Noble portrays Denethor as just a bit TOO over-the-top, right down to his "propeller guy" moment as he tumbles to his death; and at times the giant spider Shelob looks like she walked in from one of Jackson's B-films of past years; and the multiple codas seem to go on forever at a time when you're too exhausted for more. But with THE RETURN OF THE KING, Peter Jackson has accomplished something remarkable. He has managed to put the most beloved story of our time to screen with all of the universal themes that resonate across generations intact -- all the love, honor, loyalty, courage, hope, despair, and friendship; while opening up its fantasy world to outsiders like me.

FoxTrot's Jason may despair at the invasion of his neighborhood by mundane barbarians, but we barbarians are grateful to have been welcomed into this world.

-- Jill Cozzi

Read Gabriel's review of THE RETURN OF THE KING

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