My brief review of the film

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2004)

The third and final part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, this is an entry that is once again visually impressive to the point of perfection, but also once again with little substance. Nevertheless, the film is to able better its predecessors in two key areas. It is less monotonous than the first two, and the characterisation is better than in the first two. However, by now better character development is of no use; the story has developed much too far without effectively involving the viewer. It is almost like a pretentious effort to suck in the viewers in the final part who were warded away earlier on by poor character development. Another point worthy of noting is that it is not overlong this time  that would be an understatement. It is severely overlong. The producers just do not know how to end a film. There are so many points when you think you have reached the closure that the whole last half hour is completely anticlimactic. To look at the films in perspective, they are all of about the same in quality, which is no surprise: they are just different cuts of one long film. All are above average films, as they have interesting technical elements. But they are not successes, because the writing is not up to the standard of the other aspects of the film. Adapting to the screen Tolkein's story was a massive task, and it did require a lot of effort, but what one looks for when assessing a film is was it successful? Film critique for me is about rewarding success  not how much effort one puts in. It is impossible to deny how much effort the whole cast and crew went to in order to produce this spectacular looking film, but they only ever half-succeeded in capturing the magic of Tolkein's tales.