Flame me, but it's better than the book.

Rating: 10/10 (27 May 2003)

First of all, I'm still astonished that Peter Walker pulled this off. While he'd shown promise, I never expected this.
While Tolkien was a brilliant man with an extraordinary imagination, he lacked the ability to frame scenes, and his prose, which is readable and fairly pleasant in "The Hobbit," deteriorated as he wrote "The Lord of the Rings," especially in "The Return of the King," where it frequently comes off as bad parody of the King James Bible.
The substitution of Walker's visual style, which at its best, is reminiscent of Kurosawa, for Tolkien's prose, allows the brilliance of Tolkien's vision to come through undiminished. If for no other reason, that makes the movie an unexpected and valued gift.