The Return of the King was the only LoTR movie that didn't make my ballot. It's still good, but it's so much weaker than the first two parts. The liberties it takes with the story don't fit, and the endings take far too long.
Amen!
ROTK
The Good;
-Frod/Sam/Gollum ring conclusion, that's some epic death star throne room level stuff for sure.
-Theoden's speech and ride of the Rohirrim, rivals William Wallace speech!
-Lighting of the Beacons, if that isn't one of my favourite scenes of all time.
-Gandalf vs the Nazgul, the way it's filmed is spectacular, the way Gandalf turns to merge into the horse pack. Really the whole trilogy filmed horses on the move better than anyone before or since. Honourable mention for Gandalf's ride to Gondor!
The Bad.
-Having no characters in Gondor to help focus the battle, Faramir is wounded, Denethor is up in his tower being mad, which leaves us Gandalf and Pippin.
-Gondor being so weak, half the city is taken over. In the book only the witch king walks through the gates, and has to withdraw as Rohan shows up.
-Ending is a little drawn out.
-Little bit too much crammed in as a result of including the end of the 2nd book in the 3rd movie, especially with Sam and Frodo who breeze through Mordor.
The Ugly
-Battle of the Pelennor Fields being concluded by ghosts. Not how it happens in the book. It's a continual theme that the writers feel they have to make everything hopeless before a deux ex machina moment. I'd much rather see a hard fought battle with Mordor caught between Gondor Rohan and Aragorn's surprise ship force, than a "oh no it's so hopeless, then ghosts steamroll the whole thing"
-Gandalf's face off with the Witch King, one of the most amazing moments in the books, reduced to an embarrassing extended edition scene.
Now a lot of my complaints are essentially book reader criticism, and obviously any movie adaptation of something like this is going to bring many changes, and they don't get it all wrong, in fact they make many inspired changes and exclusions, but some of the ROTK changes fall very flat and seem so unnecessary.
7/10