The documentary "Horsemen of Rohan" introduces some of the animals and their stunt riders, and offers a moment designed to induce swoons in teenage girls: a besotted Orlando Bloom in full Legolas regalia planting a series of smooches on the velvety gray nose of his steed. But wait, it gets even better: The stunt rider who portrayed Arwen in the dazzling chase scene in "The Fellowship of the Ring" tells how Viggo Mortensen, after learning that she'd fallen for the white stallion she rode on, bought the horse for her. (He also bought, for himself, the horse who plays Aragorn's faithful Brago.) Ian McKellen further informs us that one of the two stallions who played the legendary Shadowfax was "a diva."

As for the film itself, it sustains all of its power with the additional 50 minutes. The performers and filmmakers are virtually fused with the material, so that their improvisations often feel more true to the novel's spirit than certain aspects of the book itself. It was Bernard Hill's idea, for example, to have his character, Theoden, lead off the movie's most spectacular scene, the charge of the Rohirrim onto Pelennor Fields, by riding across the front lines of his soldiers, holding up his sword to rattle against their spears.

The film's most beautiful moment, Faramir's suicidal ride against the occupied city of Osgiliath as Pippin sings mournfully to Faramir's mad father, Denethor, feels like the raw, wild, ancient emanation of the Anglo-Saxon and Norse sagas that inspired Tolkien. The idea came to Boyens when she heard Billy Boyd's lovely singing voice at a karaoke bar. Virtually overnight, she wrote the words for Pippin's song and Boyd himself wrote the music.

By giving more weight to the disastrous relationship between Faramir and Denethor, the extended version of "The Return of the King" brings a symmetry to all three films. Each continues the main threads, but each also contains the struggle of an individual person -- Boromir in "Fellowship," Theoden in "The Two Towers" and Faramir (or, alternately, Eowyn) in "Return" -- to answer the challenge of his day. Only Theoden succeeds at this; both Sean Bean as Boromir and John Noble, who plays Denethor, introduce a tragic vein into what would otherwise be the relatively smooth ascension of Aragorn to his destiny. It's the supporting actors here who bring to the films the full measure of humanity, the failure that keeps Aragorn's triumph from being too easy.

Not that Viggo Mortensen or any of the other principles needs much help. Mortensen makes Aragorn's nobility seem natural; his performance is an example of how the film improves on the book. To this reader, the novel's Aragorn was too stilted and idealized to be interesting. That Mortensen manages to warm and animate him is a minor miracle. Then there are the hobbits: "You made us cry," read the fax that Jackson, Walsh and Boyens sent to Sean Astin (Sam) and Elijah Wood (Frodo) after they saw the dailies of the scene where Sam shoulders the half-conscious Frodo and carries him to the lip of Mt. Doom. Indeed. The filmmakers milk these moments shamelessly, but they've earned every drop.

Watching the extended editions of all three films together still takes less time than reading Tolkien's novel, but the effect is similarly immersive. You swim in this story, and drink it and breathe it. By the time Sam rallies that last bit of willpower, if you're still with it, your defenses are entirely gone. You'll cry, too -- you just try not to. To envelop yourself in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" is to surrender all cynicism and irony, all reservations about underlying symbolism and troubling imagery, and to be carried along on an irresistible current, at least until Frodo sails off to the Undying Lands. For Jackson and his collaborators it took several years and an epic creative journey to deliver us into this pristine state, but as Bilbo Baggins himself would surely observe, it was well worth the trip.

Recent Stories