Customer Reviews

National Geographic Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Where the original National Geographic Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring was quite decent, providing an analogy of the creation of Middle Earth, and what personal events Tolkien probably inserted into his masterpiece, this one is the complete opposite.

While the concept basically is the same (interviews with the cast, experts, etc), the underlying theme is extremely poor. Basically the makers of this documentary start comparing characters in Lord of the Rings to real historical figures.

Wormtongue poisoned Theoden's mind with lies; Rasputin did the same. So Wormtongue might have been based on Rasputin. Aragorn dwelled in the wilderness for years, only to return and claim his throne. Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother, and retreated to a ranch in Dakota; the wild. See the connection?

Characters in the Lord of the Rings most likely have not been based on any real persons. And if they were, I'm quite sure Professor Tolkien would have mentioned it somewhere. While even linking world events to Lord of the Rings was speculative, this is just stretching it.

Very poor.

Well, I bought this DVD to see a particular movie clip, and I saw the clip. As to the rest, I think I would rephrase the sentence: National Geographic struggles to provide Aragorn a historical context beyond the movie. While there are lots of interesting tidbits about certain very well-known historical figures, they all seem to have been dragged in (kicking and screaming?) from other documentaries. Certainly none of them had anything to do with Tolkien or the actual historical sources that inspired him!

When I saw this I was happy for another show about Lord of the Rings because I love the books and the movies, but this is not really about the LOTR, is more about war and, really strange explanations about how is LOTR linked to history. I like History, I'm a historian myself but when I watched this I was expecting something really different :(, I give it 3 stars because I did had some spoilers about ROTK, but as a National Geographic work??, is not worth that much.

This has absolutly nothing to do with "The Lord of the Ring". The title was just a poor excuse to use previously filmed stuff to tie into the movie as another meathod of that great Hollywood game HYPING. I have seen some bad examples of the concept in my time but this one has got to be the worst. I mean the movie does not even mention NEW ZELAND for God's sake shouldn't a movie supposidly showcasing where the movies were filmed at least attempt to do that.

Overall-Don't get suckered by the Lord of the Rings on the box, save your money.

I have lots of National Geographic DVDs as they have some eccellent ones,but this DVD is the most absurd NG DVD that I have ever seen because it has absolutley nothing to do with the actual film. Fortunately,I watched it on television first and didn't waste my money.
It is about explorers and their companions of the last century and isn't really that interesting. Beyond the movie my foot,it has nothing to do with the film.
Come on National Geographic,you have nearly 300 VHS tapes of documentaries that you could release to DVD,so why give us this piece of junk?

This documenatary is going to ne on the "Lord Of The Rings:The Return Of The King" DVD movie set to be released on May 25th,perhaps as padding.
So if you are going to buy the LOTR's movie,save your money.

Let me start by saying that I loved the movies. But this commentary uses supposed Tolkien experts that have never read the books! In the movie Aragorn is a reluctant hero. In the actual novel Aragorn has been preparing his entire life to claim, not reclaim, the throne of Gondor. That is a huge discrepancy between the movies and the novel. I am surprised that the "experts" did not notice.

"How LOTR is like real life". Each segment attempts to explain why some historical figure is like a character in the movie, or vise versa. Terrible, bad - a middle school student could write a better script than this crap. Not even worth a rental.

I found this DVD very informative and it puts forward many ideas that I did not have befor viewing it.

This is on the second disc of the theatrical edition of Return of the King.

As being a huge fan of the books and the movies.
This was rather dissapointing. Comparing some of the LOTR's characters and battle odds to Franklin Roosefeld, the British army against the French and some other battles and persons in human history.
You can fill in the rest yourself..