The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2012)

I am a little bummed that this series doesn't thrill me like it used to, especially since it was once one of the few blockbusters of the past 20 years that I truly loved. The level of spectacle in the third installment is impressive indeed... although the Blu-Ray does highlight how dated some of the effects are already (just about any scene where hobbits are composited with full-size humans leaps out at you). And I don't even mind the lengthy coda, and am frankly grateful that the entire "Scouring of the Shire" episode was excised. It's a great part of the book, but in the film it would have been absurdly anticlimactic, and would have extended an already bloated ending. And this film contains some of the best emotional moments in the series -- even the "you bow to no one" scene, which could have been painfully corny, works well in context.
But one does get a bit weary of watching battle after battle after battle, CGI armies clashing in constant frenzies of murder and dismemberment (speaking of which, I could go into a lengthy tirade here about the insanity of the MPAA ratings board, but I suppose I shouldn't go down that road). Sometimes too much spectacle just makes your eyes gloss over after a while. Oh, and Gimli's one-liners are still a source of annoyance, although thankfully he gets fewer chances to utter them. I'm ranking this as the second best of trilogy... more engaging than FELLOWSHIP, but not as tight as TWO TOWERS. I wonder how I'll feel about these movies in another 10 years.