Newsday’s John Anderson can’t be faulted for his judgement about the quality of The Return of the King. His review is, for the most part, both astute and eloquent in its praise of the film. No, it’s his attempt to parse the political implications of the film that made me want to punch myself repeatedly in the face. Quoth Anderson:
The dangers of empire. The evil of unchecked power. The importance of unity among diverse peoples. Tolkien’s half-million-word message has become as fresh as it ever was.
Am I the only one surprised he didn’t break down and include “The refusal of Gandalf to consult his European allies” or “The need to negotiate with Mordor for a more stringent weapons-inspection regime” in there for good measure? Holy jeez, but this is the lamest attempt to shoehorn a mealy-mouthed “anti-war” message into The Lord of the Rings this side of Viggo Mortensen.
Listen. There’s plenty of warnings in both Tolkien and Jackson’s interpretation thereof against the abuse of power: the abyss-gazes-also corruption of Saruman, the deadly allure of the Ring and its effect on Boromir, Gollum, and Frodo, and so forth. And I’ll even grant Anderson the “diversity” angle: Tolkien and his filmic interpreters both stress the need for different societies to put aside their distrust and join together to fight a common enemy.
But the key word there isn’t “different,” it’s “fight.” The diverse societies that needed to unite did not include the goddamn Orcs. Saruman and Sauron did not have veto power at the Council of Elrond. Rohan and Gondor did not issue joint statements condemning the attack on Osgiliath or the suicide bombing at Helm’s Deep and urging both sides to head back to the negotiating table. Denethor and Wormtongue-addled Theoden were seen as a bad leaders because they refused to do what needed to be done, i.e. rise up and slaughter every Orc they could get their swords on, not because of excessive cowboyism (this despite the fact that Theoden did, in essence, live on a ranch). Not once did Aragorn ask Legolas and Gimli, “Why do they hate us?”
This was a movie about the dangers of empire, all right–the danger faced by free peoples when an empire loudly announces its desire to see them all dead, then rapidly begins pursuing this end. It was about the danger of not waking up and kicking such an empire’s ass.
And this was a movie about the evil of unchecked power, but only insofar as it was much, much more about the power of unchecked evil.
Doofus.