The best of the 3, and the most faithful of the 3

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2003)

I've already given the other two movies in this trilogy a 10, and since you can't go any higher, this one deserves at least a 10 as well. The difference being that, originally, I didn't give the other movies a 10, Fellowship got an 8, and Two Towers got a 9. But after seeing the Extended editions of both movies, I had to give them both tens. The Extended versions were such big improvements that they actually fixed every original problem I had with the theatrical versions.
But this one gets a 10 right from the start. I can immediately tell you that this was the most faithful adaptation of a Tolkien book. There are many omissions (that I expect to see put back in the Extended edition), and a few minor changes, but on the whole, this is the book brought to screen. And it's breathtakingly good. Everything great about the previous movies gets multiplied by 10 in this one. I don't want to go into too many details because I don't want to spoil anything, but In my opinion, this is the single greatest movie ever made.
It had only one flaw, and that was that Saruman was not in the movie. Normally I wouldn't give this a pass, how could Jackson leave such an important plot point dangling? It almost made me want to drop a point from my rating, but the movie was so incredible that I couldn't dare. I'm also comforted to know that doubtless Saruman will be in the Extended Edition, which I expect will be over 4 hours long. I suspect, that after seeing the extended edition, I'm going to have to give this film an 11. These films require that extra umph on the scale. They go up to 11.