The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Reviews
Flix Capacitor
Rousing, satisfying and awe-inspiring, The Return Of The King provides a worthy conclusion to what is both an incredible cinematic achievement and the finest fantasy filmmaking ever to grace our screens.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Antagony & Ecstasy
The spectacle is ramped up here more than in the preceding two movies combined.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Birmingham Mail
When I met the barefooted scruff [Peter Jackson] two years ago, he regretted he'd never been to Birmingham to see Tolkien's inspirations at first hand.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Slant Magazine
An insurmountable amount of extras comes second only to New Line Home Video's stunning visual and audio transfer of Peter Jackson's exhilarating and exhausting epic.
Cinema Writer
If this wasn't quite the best movie of 2003, it was definitely the most fun to be had at the movies all year
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Movie Metropolis
...every bit as grand, as imposing, as jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring as anything in the first two episodes. (Extended Edition)
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
Cinema Crazed
This is a masterpiece of filmmaking and Jackson truly deserves an Oscar.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Urban Cinefile
A tale of heroes, bonded together by friendship, it's the very special friendship between hobbits Elijah Wood's Frodo and Sean Astin's Sam that touches us most of all.
eFilmCritic.com
A lot of it is just hacking and slashing on a mammoth scale, which is still just hacking and slashing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Big Picture Big Sound
This is a filmmaker in the grandest tradition of the word.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Princeton Town Topics
An absolutely absorbing finale which establishes the trilogy as perhaps the best mythic fable ever brought to the big screen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Top CriticStanding out amid an excellent cast is Elijah Wood, stymied by tweeness in the earlier films but here convincingly developing the character of Frodo as the embodiment of valor and self-sacrifice.
Guardian [UK]
No flabber has been left ungasted by Mr Jackson's mighty battle sequences, nor no gob unsmacked.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Some story strands are crudely abbreviated; others fail to develop elements that were already well-established.
Film Threat
A masterful moment in cinema.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Lessons of Darkness
Imbues its central conflicts with mythic timelessness.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Dark Horizons
A truly cinematic experience that you'll find practically impossible to forget and a more than fitting end to one of the greatest film franchises ever made.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
ScreenRant
Let's just get this out of the way: Return of the King was awesome.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Looking Closer
Jackson finishes the epic with a flourish that leaves all other big screen fantasies thoroughly humbled.
| Original Score: A
