The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Reviews
Critic & User Reviews
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Critic Reviews
It's been a long time since a commercially oriented film with the scale of "King" ended with such an enduring and heartbreaking coda.
Read the full reviewAs completely real on the psychological level as its up-to-the-moment visual effects have on the physical.
Read the full reviewLabeling this as a "movie" is almost an injustice. This is an experience of epic scope and grandeur, amazing emotional power, and relentless momentum.
Read the full reviewAn epic success and a history-making production that finishes with a masterfully entertaining final installment.
Read the full reviewThis movie is not only a thrilling experience, it closes the book on a truly satisfying trilogy.
Read the full reviewIt might be the cinema's most astonishing holy war film. The Lord of the Rings took seven years and an army of gifted artists to execute, and the striving of its makers is in every splendid frame. It's more than a movie--it's a gift.
Read the full reviewThe conclusion of Peter Jackson's masterwork is passionate and literate, detailed and expansive, and it's conceived with a risk-taking flair for old-fashioned movie magic at its most precious.
Read the full reviewAs good as each individual movie is, the third film vaults the work into the stratosphere of classic movies. Key characters are enhanced, new civilizations visited and battles fought more intensely, while feelings and motivations are plumbed more deeply and movingly.
Read the full reviewRepresents that filmmaking rarity -- a third part of a trilogy that is decisively the best of the lot. With epic conflict, staggering battles, striking landscapes and effects, and resolved character arcs all leading to a dramatic conclusion to more than nine hours of masterful storytelling.
Read the full reviewAll in all, it's a fitting conclusion to the series, and yet there are disappointments built in. For one, Jackson has opted not to film Tolkien's downbeat "Scouring Of The Shire" epilogue.
Read the full reviewThen, finally, there are the endings, all six of them...For us outsiders, it seems like too much of a good thing...But all those are minor rants: The big fact is that The Return of the King puts you there at Waterloo, or Thermopylae or the Bulge, any desperate place where men ran low on blood and iron and ammo, but not on courage.
Read the full reviewThis is a film in which ideas resonate as well as action. Gandalf?s words to Pippin about death have a muscular poetry.
Read the full reviewYet what I felt when the lights came up at the end of this visionary, titanic, relentless experience was something different: a strange relief that it was, at last, over.
Read the full reviewThere is little enough psychological depth anywhere in the films, actually, and they exist mostly as surface, gesture, archetype and spectacle. They do that magnificently well, but one feels at the end that nothing actual and human has been at stake.
Read the full reviewThough an estimable success overall, The Return of the King has several scenes too many and too great a concentration on battles.
Read the full reviewReview excerpts provided by Metacritic.com.
The Metascore® designation for this movie is 94
User Reviews
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The Greatest film of all time.
"Without a doubt, no movie in history has ever been this epic, and never again will there be one this amazing. Peter Jackson proves himself to be the greatest epic filmmaker of the 21st century, and this film deserved every one of i'ts record breaking 11 oscars. In short, this was the greatest film of all time. YES, ALL TIME! HAIL TO THE KING!Note: this review was wriitten in march 2008, almost five years since the release of the film."
The Supreme Epic Film Of All Time!
"No other fantasy-action/adventure film will ever live up to the Tolkien legendarium films (aka The Lord of the Rings, the inevitable Hobbt and Silmarillion). There's just no way any other fantasy films will be able to master the beauty, dedication, and overall masterpieces that make up The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As for The Return of the King, in my opinion, it is the best of the three -- and the best movie of all time -- the most emotional, dramatic, epic, and achievement. See these films!"
Best movie ever!
"This movie, like the others, was quite frankly one of the three best movies ever made. As to those who say it was too long, what exactly do you propose cutting out? Nothing can be; I think they cut out some things they shouldn't already, but they had to stop it SOMEwhere. And no, there are not too many endings. They skipped a couple, in fact."
MHMM
"the movie was hard to follow and very graphic i didnt like it as much as i thought i would it was like never ending"
AMAZING!!!
"loved it great way to end the series i like the change in the ending how its different in the book(frodo dies) the true end might have lost fans good job"
REVIEW LORD
"A FINE WAY TO END THE TRILOGY, BUT LETS JUST PRAY THAT PETER JACKSON GETS RIGHTS FOR THE HOBBIT, NO OTHER DIRECTOR CAN DO AS GOOD OF A JOB ON IT. RETURN OF THE KING IS A MASTERPIECE."
IT WAS WONDERFUL!
"This was the best movie I have ever seen. I was so happy with the ending and the whole movie just blew me away. The acting and secial affects was the best I have ever seen. No movie will ever top this one. After the movie was over I was so sad that they wern't going to make another one. There was nothing to complain about because the movie was perfict. I saw it 5 times in the theater and was by far the best movie out if the three. You have to buy this movie. You woun't be the same after you see it. I loved this movie"
Peter Jackson makes a name for himself
"This is my favorite movie of all time. I read all three books and it is shaking now to see J.R.R Tolkien's genuinely written world come to life as in my opinion the or one of the greatest films ever made. Easily better than Gone With the Wind."
Surprisingly,my favorite Movie
"This is the best! I loved it!"
again.. lame
"So if 1 and 2 werent enough, now they've brought us version 3 of the never ending movie. BOOOOOO!"
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