The greatest epic ever filmed.

Rating: 10/10 (18 December 2003)

The Return of the King has finally arrived, and it is above all expectation. I went into the theater with my hopes to the roof, but still having doubts as to whether this film would be able to reach the same level as the first film did. As soon as the film started, all fears were thrown aside.
This is truly magnificent film making. Peter Jackson has managed to do just that which makes fantasy so hard to do, namely create a realistic vision of a world utterly unlike our own, and explore that world to the fullest. One sequence with Legolas and an oliphaunt will make you cry just from the sheer amazing imagination of it. The scale and grandeur of this film is so far beyond that of any other it will take many viewings and several years to put it into perspective.
This film will be remembered as the ultimate fantasy film, and I honestly cannot see how it will ever be topped again. The story is the greatest ever told, written over a period of 50 years, and it is retold for the screen with so much passion and so much love for it that there is just no redoing it. By all rights, this film should never have been made, for a movie company that throws this much money onto a relatively unknown filmmaker makes such a gamble, by all logic it should have driven them to the brink of bankruptcy.
It is simply amazing. Thank you, Peter Jackson.