How Effective Is The Promotional Media For The Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King.

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How Effective Is The Promotional Media For:

The Lord Of The Rings

Return Of The King    

The promotional media for the final episode of this epic trilogy differs slightly to that of the first two. This time it is more dark and foreboding, as it is time for the final battle of Middle Earth. All the posters are full of solemn faces, either deep in battle, or staring, with a face that tells us they know something terrible is coming. The effectiveness of this relies on you knowing what has happened in the first films, and knowing a basic outline of what will happen in the third chapter.

In the trailer, the first few frames show this darkness perfectly; mountains on the horizon silhouetted against a black sky, but with a glowing yellow-red rising from behind, and remains of a building in the foreground to the left, but although it  portrays the darkness in the film, it looks a bit cheesy to me, like it’s a particularly badly made film.

Then it starts to redeem itself, showing Aragorn and Legolas talking in the dark, and flashbacks of the Ring, the forest and Gandalf. Straight after this they show some evil-looking black dragons swooping down towards the land. The way these couple of shots have been done is decidedly good, and definitely makes up for the poor start. It gives a feeling of the past, like something happened long before, that now they’re about to find out about an old terror that once reined. Seeing that little section tells you why they chose the design they did for the final theatrical poster, i.e. lots of little snapshots of all the characters, either deep in thought or deep in battle.

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After watching the trailer, even though some bits were a bit pathetic, the overall feeling you receive is that this film contains something bigger and beyond your perception, so the film really comes to life. It’s one of those trailers that, because there’s so much going on, it leaves you at the end with that wow feeling.

The trailer resembles the press release in a way, because it’s all about the greatness of the story. They use adjectives like ‘astounding’, ‘epic’, and ‘ultimate’ in the press release, which resemble some of the shots they use in the trailer, ...

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