As Good as it Could have been with my one exception

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2004)

The Return of the King was an excellent movie, there's no two ways about it.
Certainly not the greatest movie ever made but I thoroughly enjoyed countless aspects of it and won't go on to say all what's already been said.
Peter Jackson does basically capture the feeling and aura that Tolkien dreamed of, with one exception, the viewer's perception of distance and time.
The only thing I would have changed would have been to incorporate Tolkien's wonderful Middle Earth map into the movie and to somehow account better for how much time elapses over the entire story (more than a year).
Having read the books many times I have always felt (and I'm sure many will agree with me) that the map, always included with the books, was an essential part of the experience of the Lord of the Rings.
Having knowledge of the terrain and localities, where are they traveling to and from and how far was essential to understanding the story. This gives the story its sense of scale and a critical account of distance and time.
In having knowledge of the stories I knew where Frodo was relative to Gandalf, where Isengard was relative to Rohan etc. etc. If you haven't ever read it before this critical concept was lost to you and in my opinion made the story more difficult to follow and appreciate.