Wow! Just wow!

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2003)

It's hard to review "LOTR: The Return of the King" without regards to the first two movies. Unlike most series, "King" was written and filmed at the same time as the other two, so no one had to struggle to come up with another script. LOTR was probably the riskiest venture ever taken in the history of movies, and it was worth every penny.
"King" opens by showing us something that was not written into the LOTR novels: How an innocent Hobbit named Smeagol became possessed by the One Ring and became Gollum. From there, "King" picks up right where "The Two Towers" left off. Helm's Deep was successfully defended against Saruman's evil Uruk-Hai, but at tremendous cost to both Rohan and Elven warriors. Gollum, who has retaken Smeagol's body, leads Frodo and Sam into Mordor. And Merry and Pippen are getting stoned at Isengard, now taken over by the Ents.
A three-and-a-half hour adventure follows. As Gandalf and Pippin race from Rohan to Gondor to warn the acting king of an impending attack by the Orcs and Uruk-Hai, Merry, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Merry join Eowyn, Theoden, and Rohan's troops in the final battle at Minas Tirith. If you thought the Battle of Helm's Deep was incredible, the Battle of Minas Tirith is even better.
Then there was Shelob, the giant spider of Mordor moved from "The Two Towers" novel to "King" in the movies. In one of the scarier scenes in the series, Shelob spins Frodo into a mummifying web and waits to eat him.
The three epiloges carry on for at least 20 minutes, but they cover three or four chapters in the novel, so in order to keep with Tolkien's stories, Peter Jackson had to keep all three.
"LOTR: The Return of the King" is one of the best movies I have ever seen.