I'm not being sarcastic - - I love the LOTR novel, it's my all-time favorite book.

...and yes I'm talking about fully animated, but in the unimaginably mind-blowing CGI technology of twenty years from now...

The finale to the greatest movie of all time.

Just rewatched the film again and no matter how many times I've seen it, it always blows me away. There's just so much I love about this movie. A+

RETURN OF THE KING

Can't believe I didn't rate this when it came out but I enjoyed it much back then and recently (just today) saw it again in a trilogy of it at the theatre. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very enthused crowd but whatever. I still enjoy many moments in this film ranging from Theodon's war speech before the big charge to the schizophrenic mind of Gollum. Action scenes were great, the overall story was good and acting excellent. A couple quibbles still bother me to this day, all the fake dying or thought of fake death that occurs not just in this film but throughout the series. Just to much of that for me. That last battle at the Black Gate was over the top. Including the speech by Aragorn. Yeah, they needed a distraction for Frodo but it was still annoying to have this mini battle after the huge tour de force battle that took about an hour to do. Finally, when I read this book I was so hoping Merry was going to die as I read the battle scene. I just wanted a main character to die real bad after all the fake deaths. Now, Theodon did die and that's pretty moving because I liked his character but it would have been nice to have at least 1 main character die even though he lives in the book. The endings were long back then and they are still long now, but whatever. It was the final film and they took their absolute time dotting every I and crossing every T.

Grade - A

So very good to this day and nearly perfect ending to the greatest trilogy ever. So many bad ass scenes are there and the movie handles all moving parts so very well in the end. The best scenes are the those at the mountain which would have come out goofy in hands of many directors.

Probably my least favorite on this rewatch, but it was my favorite originally so don’t know how these compare. I think they could have found more ways to differentiate the battles in this film and Two Towers. But the stuff with Frodo Sam and Gollum is again great, and the ending is heartwarming and suitably epic.

Though it suffers from some of the same problems with bloat and pacing found in the second films, Return of the King contains more satisfying narrative and character beats, as well as satisfyingly concluding the epic saga, which is no small feat.

Helms Deep is the best battle in the trilogy. And as such everything here feels less memorable and less engrossing. But it does have such a satisfying conclusion that it makes it all work. It is also a masterpiece of course, but much of this film is the icing on the cake we have had to sit through vegetables to get to. It only works because of what it is set up before it.

This is why it is best to think as LOTR as one film. ROTK is the third act.