Not the best movie of all time.

Rating: 1/10 (25 September 2011)

I must say that after Titanic and Shakespeare in Love won ''Best Picture of the Year'' on their respective years I could not avoid to feel sad for the masterpieces that were competing for the award and that deserved it more than the actual winners. Having said that I must say I felt deeply insulted when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won, over such a delightful film as Mystic River. I honestly think the Academy cheated all the viewers with an actual taste form films.
My reasons for this: First. Even though the production values are amazing, only a few technical aspects are really worthy of recognition, art direction, sound direction and mixing, film edition and make-up, however other technical departments are not so worthy of the recognition they received. This statement is especially true for the visual effects department. It is true that for 2003, the visual effects were honestly good, however unlike many winners in the visual effects category, the visuals of TLOFR: ROTK, have aged in a very unflattering way. The visual effects, especially the Oliphants sequence and the charge of the ghost army look so outdated now, that makes me wonder why did the Academy awarded this department that year, especially when the visuals of the other two nominated films on that category have aged so much better than the visuals of this movie. Both Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean, have more realistic looking visual effects and today still look impressive, compared to the awkward looking Legolas during the Oliphants CGI scene. Academy Award winners on this category have the amazing property of still impress after so many years, the best example of this is Jurassic Park, the visuals of JP have aged wonderfully compared to ROTK's visuals, the visuals still impress and look so much more real than most of the CGI flicks these days.
Second. The adaptation of the book is nothing else but disappointing, many, many, many, missing things from the book, things that actually made the whole trilogy make sense, that gave the whole, the natural, small man versus the industrialization sense to the story were left behind in order to add more sense-less fantasy action that the fans demanded. Also the characters look only like a pale shadow of the characters we fell in love with on the books and the first two films, especially Gandalf, Sir Ian McKellen did such a wonderful job in the first two films, especially in The Fellowship of the Ring, impressive enough to received an Academy Award nomination on a kind of movie that almost never receives that kind of nominations, but on this one is almost painful to watch actors as good as him and Viggo Mortensen. Shame on you mister Jackson.
Third. Even though the sound department deserved the nomination and the Academy Award they received, the music department is far from good, is in fact very deficient. The original Shire themes and the action cues from the first film are reused thru the trilogy, however they fail to get fresh with each film, to be honest after more than 7 hours of the same themes, they get very tiresome and boring. Not counting the horrible themes provided by Enya, boring, un-exiting and devoid of heart and soul, which is the complete opposite of the feeling everyone gets when reading the books.
In short, this movie is not a bad movie, it is average to good, with great values in some departments but for the most disappointing for missing the main themes from the books, turning a very interesting, moving and appealing story into a fantasy action massive blockbuster for the masses.