The Weekly Stuff #296 – Revisiting The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Our trilogy of The Lord of the Rings retrospectives comes to a close this week, as we dive deep with The Return of the King, the final installment in Peter Jackson’s legendary adaptation. Sixteen years later, does the film hold up as well as its predecessors, and what do we see in it now, older and in the context of a very different cinematic and cultural landscape, that we could not glimpse then? It’s a long conversation befitting this absolute behemoth of a film, but we also make time to talk about Criterion’s announcement of their Godzilla: The Showa Era Films box set for Spine #1000, Sean tells us about falling in love with the wonderful world of Dragon Quest Builders 2, and Jonathan gives first impressions on Fire Emblem: Three Houses after one weekend and 13 hours of play. Time Chart: Intro: 0:00:00 – 0:03:45 Godzilla for Criterion #1000: 0:03:45 – 0:14:45 Dragon Quest Builders 2: 0:14:45 – 0:34:51 Fire Emblem Three Houses: 0:34:51 – 1:02:58 Revisiting The Return of the King: 1:02:58 – 4:06:32 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel! Subscribe for free to 'The Weekly Stuff' in iTunes! Follow Jonathan Lack on Twitter! Follow Sean Chapman on Twitter! Read Jonathan Lack’s movie reviews and stay up to date with all our podcast projects at https://www.jonathanlack.comSubscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide and wonderful world of anime: https://www.japanimation-station.com Read Jonathan’s book 200 Reviews in Paperback or on Kindle – https://a.co/d/bLx53vKSubscribe to our YouTube channels! Japanimation Station: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation  Purely Academic: https://www.youtube.com/@purelyacademicpodcastSupport the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuffOriginal Music by Thomas Lack https://www.thomaslack.com/©2012 - Present Jonathan R. Lack & Sean Chapman