LOS ANGELES — The Return of the King, like its predecessor The Two Towers, opens with a flashback.

The halflings Deagol and Smeagol are fishing when Deagol's line hooks a fish, pulling him into the water. There, upon the river bottom, he finds the evil ring of power. In a fit of jealous rage, Smeagol strangles Deagol, thus beginning his ownership of the ring that eventually drives him mad and transforms him into the pitiable Gollum.

In The Return of the King, hobbits Frodo and Sam continue their quest to destroy the ring, unknowingly being led by Gollum to Mount Doom through the lair of Shelob the spider.

A precious few have already seen the film. Nick Thomm, executive producer of the radio show “Kresta in the Afternoon,” is among them. Thomm joined a press junket for the film in Los Angeles in early December. He described it as the best film in the series.

“Return of the King is the exclamation point on the trilogy,” Thomm said. “While the films work set apart from the books, [director] Peter Jackson got across the themes in the books.”

Not everyone has been pleased with the film, however.

Act One's Barbara Nicolosi described the film as “the pick of the dripping, over-produced, dark and confusing lot” and as a “spectacle [that] only serves itself.

“This film is the most self-indulgent of the three,” Nicolosi said. “The film ends at least seven times, each one bringing tear-filled eyes and the loving gripping of shoulders.”

Nicolosi did, however, credit the film with being the most suspense-ful and for having “some semblance of story.”

The $300 million epic has already made $650 million on the first two films alone. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops listed the second part of the trilogy among one of its best films of 2002. Critics believe the third film will be a serious Oscar contender.

The third film, like the others, does deviate from J.R.R. Tolkien's books at times.

Newsweek noted that the film leaves out crucial footage, such as the relationship between Eowyn and Faramir, Gandalf's final confrontation with Saruman and the scouring of the shire.

“When the ring is destroyed there is a departure from the book,” Thomm said, “but it sticks to Tolkien's intention.”

Tolkien purists had similar reactions to the first two films in the series.

“I was greatly relieved and pleased with the first film,” said Joseph Pearce, Tolkien biographer and writer-in-residence at Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich. “The second film disappointed me a bit because it drifted from Tolkien's plot for no good reason.”

Fans of the films have found the extended-version DVDs more faithful to the books than the original theatrical versions.

The extra footage, said Victoria Newman, a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at St. Louis University, provides the “fun but inessential bits of narrative that inveterate Tolkien fans noticed were missing in the original cut, like when Sam can unexpectedly free his elvin rope with only a gentle tug after he and Frodo use it to climb down a cliff face in The Two Towers.” Other times, she said, the footage adds a line that fills in a gap.

Additional scenes she found true to the spirit of Tolkien. As an example, she pointed out the scene in The Two Towers where Hobbits Merry and Pippin grow taller from drinking water in the Fangorn Forest.

“We’re told in the novel that they do gain inches,” she said, “but the particular vignette in which it happens comes from the imagination of the [script] writers.”

Vehicle for Conversion

The director, Jackson, has admitted he was simply interested in making a movie and had no interest in Tolkien's Catholicism. Still, the film's fans have said Catholic elements did make it into the film.

Thomm said he could see Tolkien's Catholic worldview expressed particularly in the film's climax and the destruction of the ring.

“Frodo's interior struggle and selfishness spoke of our own human frailty and how we are all unworthy,” Thomm said. “Frodo is tempted and succumbs to it, whereas in Sam we see the reliance of the grace of God.”

Thomm also saw Tolkien's worldview expressed in the father-son relationships in the film.

“Gandalf is plainly the father-figure to the fellowship, and then there's Denethor's heartbreaking relationship to his sons Boromir and Faramir,” he said. “When Denethor sends off Faramir to almost certain death, the son follows the will of his father.”

The story still continues to draw people to the Church. Although neither the books nor the films mention God, many fans have spoken of their power for conversion.

“Even if the films were worse than they are, the bottom line is that anything that gets people to read the books is beneficial,” Joseph Pearce said. “Thousands of people that had never read them before are reading them. In that respect, thanks be to God for Peter Jackson.”

Among those who are grateful for the films is Emily Kinsman of Zionsville, N.C.

Kinsman's mother read The Hobbit to her when she was a young girl, but Kinsman had never read the trilogy until after she had seen The Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen.

“I never knew what I was missing all those years,” Kinsman said.

Since first seeing The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001, Kinsman has read the trilogy twice.

She said the influence of the books and Tolkien's Catholic faith impacted her decision to become Catholic.

When she first saw The Fellowship of the Ring, Kinsman was attending an evangelical Protestant church.

“Within that church, whenever someone found out I enjoyed Tolkien, they would shoot disapproving glances at me and ask me if I was sure those books and films were appropriate for a Christian to watch,” Kinsman said.

When Kinsman told them she wrote in the fantasy genre, she said their disapproval only grew.

“This response angered me,” she said. “I felt that God had called me to write fantasy novels, but my church was condemning me for doing so. When I realized that Tolkien was largely an accepted and celebrated Catholic, the transition happened quickly.”

Kinsman is currently attending the Church's Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults classes and plans to join the Church in the spring.

Others say the books and films have renewed their faith.

“The books rekindled my Catholic faith at that time in my life when I had drifted the farthest,” said John Hoerig of Green Bay, Wis.

“From Tolkien's Galadriel and the reaction of other characters to her, I came to understand how love and devotion to the Blessed Mother manifests itself in a soul,” Hoerig added. “From Sam's humble and faithful service to his master Frodo, I discovered the dignity of obedience and submission to hierarchy.”

“When all is said and done, the films are remarkably well executed in both their original and extended versions. When you consider how many bedtimes it takes to read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to your children, it's unbelievable that the film writers are trying to tell the whole story in just nine theater-released hours,” Newman said. “It's even more impressive how faithful to Tolkien's novels the first two films have been.”

Fans wonder if this is the last they’ll see of the hobbits on the big screen. Director Jackson said that if complex rights issues can be resolved, he might bring back the characters of Bilbo, Gollum, Gandalf and perhaps even Arwen for a film version of The Hobbit, Tolkien's prequel to the trilogy.

“I’d be interested in doing it,” Jackson said, “because I think it would give continuity to the overall chapter.”

Tim Drake writes from St. Cloud, Minnesota.