The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003) New Line Cinema 📢 Director: Peter Jackson 💰 Producer: Barrie M. Osborne, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson 👫 Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill. 🏆 Awards ceremony: -76th Academy Awards: March 29, 2004. Kodak Theatre, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. 🎭 Other films nominated for Best Picture this year: -Lost In Translation. -Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World. -Mystic River. -Seabiscuit. 📕 Plot summary: Final part of a 3-film project with Frodo Baggins' journey into Mordor to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom and to end the reign of terror which has a stranglehold over Middle-Earth. He is accompanied by best friend Samwise Gamgee and is (mis)led by the creature Gollum along the way. Elsewhere, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli join forces with others to assist the young Hobbits from afar. 💥 Standout scene(s): When Aragorn makes the King of the Dead an offer he can't refuse. Later, when the oath is fulfilled and Aragorn releases the Dead from their spell. There is one quite hilarious moment when boulders are being launched at the Orcs but Gothmog simply stands his ground and when it lands next to him he turns and spits on it! 🔑 Facts: -The 76th Academy Awards. -Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won all 11: Best Picture, Director, Adapted screenplay, Art direction, Costume design, Editing, Makeup, Score, Song, Sound mixing, Visual effects. -This was the second Best Picture appearance for Brad Dourif (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). -The third Best Picture appearance for Bernard Hill (Gandhi, Titanic). -The second Best Picture appearance for Ian Hold (Chariots Of Fire). 🙂 Personal opinion: The epic scale of this film is mind-boggling. The production quality coupled with Peter Jackson's vision is simply incomparable with anything else that has even been made before. Naturally, it helps to be familiar with the first two films in the trilogy too! The fact that they said it was impossible to make to begin with just shows you the magic of how all of those involved managed to somehow bring Tolkien's book(s) to life like this. The stand-outs were the cinematography (just look at those New Zealand landscapes!), the sound, the score, the visuals, models, sets were all incredible. And let's not forget somebody had to edit all of this together (deserved the Oscar too.) Christopher Lee's all-too brief inclusion in the Extended Version is a bonus but let's face it, none of the actors were ever going to win an award for their parts in the film. One of the very few negatives I have with the film is the never-ending finale. So many false endings and it just seems to drag on and on in the last 15 minutes. Personally, I have always considered this final part of the trilogy to be the weakest of the three films, and having watched all three back-to-back for this project I still hold that opinion; but I am pleased it won the Best Picture Oscar after losing out for the previous two films. God bless you, Peter Jackson. Did it deserve the Oscar? ✅YES. Absolutely and definitely YES. 8/10

Review date: 22 May 2025