| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly
The 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.
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| 100 |
The Hollywood Reporter
David Hunter
An epic success and a history-making production that finishes with a masterfully entertaining final installment.
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| 100 |
Newsweek
The second installment was better than the first, and this one is best of all. It has spectacular action scenes and imaginary creatures, and it’s by far the most moving chapter. The performances have deepened.
|
| 100 |
Time
The second half of the film elevates all the story elements to Beethovenian crescendo. Here is an epic with literature's depth and opera's splendor -- and one that could be achieved only in movies. What could be more terrific?
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| 100 |
Variety
Represents 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.
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| 100 |
Empire
Those who have walked beside these heroes every step of the way on such a long journey deserve the emotional pay-off as well as the action peaks, and they will be genuinely touched as the final credits roll.
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| 100 |
ReelViews
Labeling this as a "movie" is almost an injustice. This is an experience of epic scope and grandeur, amazing emotional power, and relentless momentum.
|
| 100 |
New York Magazine
Jackson is rare among the makers of epic movies in that he knows how to do the small stuff, too. The Return of the King has “heart”--how else could it pump out all that blood?
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| 100 |
New York Daily News
The most emotionally satisfying because, in addition to having both more intimate drama and more spectacular battles, it resolves all of the issues raised before.
|
| 100 |
New York Post
A majestic conclusion to a nine-plus-hours epic that stirs the heart, mind and soul as few films ever have.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
Like all great fantasies and epics, this one leaves you with the sense that its wonders are real, its dreams are palpable.
|
| 100 |
USA Today
As 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.
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| 100 |
Los Angeles Times
As completely real on the psychological level as its up-to-the-moment visual effects have on the physical.
|
| 100 |
The New York Times
It's been a long time since a commercially oriented film with the scale of "King" ended with such an enduring and heartbreaking coda.
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| 100 |
Slate
It 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.
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| 100 |
Charlotte Observer
Jackson had the vision, persistence, insight and patience for this mighty job, plus the smarts to shape stage veterans and overlooked film actors into a seamless cast. He's made himself as immortal as a movie director can be.
|
| 100 |
Miami Herald
Feels like a miracle, a movie that exceeds even the most formidable expectations without straying from its singular path. All hail this King.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
It rises, all on its own, to the realm of masterwork.
|
| 100 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
First and foremost, it soars because its grand design and numerous story problems were worked out half a century ago by a guy named Tolkien, and Jackson was smart enough to realize this.
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| 100 |
Washington Post
This movie is not only a thrilling experience, it closes the book on a truly satisfying trilogy.
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| 100 |
Dallas Observer
This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It is a profound testament to the extraordinary power of moving images and sound.
|
| 100 |
Film Threat
Clint Morris
A masterful moment in cinema. Jackson has created a film that's deemed to be liked –- even loved -- by almost anyone of all ages. It's destined to become a classic series.
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| 100 |
LA Weekly
The deep satisfaction of The Return of the King is in surrendering ourselves to the finale, in letting Jackson's superb storytelling (with due credit to co-screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) surround us like a blazing campfire tale -- which it does, gloriously.
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| 100 |
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Ties everything together with a dazzling synthesis of pagan animism, heroic quest mythology, orientalism, Pre-Raphaelite imagery, 1950s sci-fi creature features, and Hollywood war epics.
|
| 100 |
Premiere
A phantasmagorical slab of epic entertainment that satisfies on every conceivable level.
|
| 100 |
Portland Oregonian
From the acting to the special effects to the landscapes to the cinematography, editing and music, to the details of decor, wardrobe and armaments, we never once feel that we are in anything but the hands of an absolute master of the medium.
|
| 100 |
Wall Street Journal
The invisible wizard Peter Jackson makes use of every scene to show us the meaning of magnificence. Never has a filmmaker aimed higher, or achieved more.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Then, 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.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
I love Jackson's "Rings" saga despite his propensity for whimsical animation whenever he tries to strike a chord of dread or menace.
|
| 90 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
All 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.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
Yet 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.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
There 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.
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| 88 |
Rolling Stone
This is a film in which ideas resonate as well as action. Gandalf’s words to Pippin about death have a muscular poetry.
|
| 80 |
The New Yorker
Peter Jackson has not really made a movie of The Lord of the Rings; he has sprung clear of it to forge something new. He has drawn a deep breath, and taken the plunge. [5 January 2004, p. 89]
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| 80 |
Village Voice
In short, this Krakatoa is at once exhausting and riveting. It's a technological marvel, and for those not with the program, a bit of a bore.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
It’s odd and unfortunate, however, that The Return of the King just barely misses the eye-misting emotional wallop of the series’ previous installment, The Two Towers, which had a lyrical subtlety underpinning the vast vistas of growing chaos (and Christopher Lee hardly hurt matters) and hobbits-in-peril.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The [final] battle is vast, and undoubtedly required thousands of hours of matching puppetry, robotics and computer code, but it is not without tedium.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The Return of the King is too long...The various story lines...come together in stilted, episodic ways. The narrative is less-than-seamless.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Though an estimable success overall, The Return of the King has several scenes too many and too great a concentration on battles.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Despite its length, the film only starts feeling as long at the end -- or, more correctly, ends. Serious fans of the novels will be prepared for the serial codicils, but the uninitiated are likely to think the film is over several times before it actually is.
|
| 70 |
Film Threat
Kevin Carr
If The Return of the King was 2 1/2 hours long, it would have rocked. It would have been better than The Two Towers, which is the best film in the series.
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| 50 |
Christian Science Monitor
Add a lot of dull acting -- except Sir Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis -- and you have an uneven movie with yawns aplenty.
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