Two Words: Overkill & Excessive

Rating: 5/10 (20 January 2007)

First of all, let me just say how impressed I was with the first two movies in this trilogy. They were outstanding films and deserving of all the awards they received. Perhaps that is one reason I was so disappointed in this movie; it wasn't nearly as interesting as the first two. The main reason can be summed up in one word: OVERKILL.
Director Peter Jackson made the same mistake he made in the film he did right after this one: "King Kong," where the action was way too much, too the point of ludicrousness and an insult to viewers' intelligence. So was this film, the third in the LOTR series.
It was too much action, so much that after halfway through this 3 hour, 20-minute movie I was numb by then and could care less what happened from that point. I stuck with it, but it just got worse and worse with more ridiculous action scenes going on one after the other with absolutely no credibility to any of them.
Examples of what I mean regarding "credibility" are scenes in which humongous monsters and machines 100 times the size and strength of the "good guys" would always lose. Even females and little Hobbitts disposed of these-supposedly indestructible creatures, time after time. It was so Rambo-like, so stupidly juvenile it was insulting to watch.
After awhile, it wasn't even entertaining....the worst sin of them all for fantasy-adventure movie. To use another descriptive word, this film - like Jackson's subsequent King Kong - was EXCESSIVE.
By overdoing the action, the awesome-looking creatures and the wonderful special-effects that captured the LOTR audiences for the first two movies, ended this trilogy on a sour note. Too much violence translates into "boring."
I also got tired of seeing a 99-percent dead "Frodo" somehow still managing to go on and on with these never-ending agonizing looks on his face and his little tearful buddies crying their eyes out constantly. Enough already! Finish the story!
This was overkill of the worst magnitude and an almost needless last three hours of a great story.