Disappointing!

Rating: 5/10 (17 December 2003)

This movie was disappointing. As the third and final piece to the LOTR trilogy, this film took a step back from the previous two. I commend Peter Jackson's work on "The Fellowship..." and "The Two Towers" as great spectacles in modern film, however, "The Return of the King" will go down as the weakest link in this trilogy.
Some problems I had with this movie is the reoccurring patterns that we have already seen in the previous two movies. Just when it seems as though all hope is lost for the "good" guys, some swooping x-factor comes in and helps and saves the day. And come-on...how in the world is anyone supposed to beat ghosts. I feel this was a poor interpretation from the book.
And how many more times do we need to see Frodo about to give up, and then Sam giving a pep-talk to keep his spirits up. We've seen this scene about 20 times already in the previous two movies.
The main battle scene in this movie does not compare to the other main battle scenes from the previous two movies also.
I usually don't complain about long movies, but this movie was ridiculously long at almost 3.5 hours. All-in-all it was still a decent movie but the worst out of the trilogy.
7/10