While Frodo and Sam continue on their way to Mordor, The Great Battle Of Our Time™ is about to kick off in Rohan.

Gollum/Smeagol tricks Frodo by sending him down a path where a big spider attacks... Will he survive? Will the world end? OMG! There's only 1 and a half hours left...

"Smeagol is certainly my favourite in this movie. I am a bald man who has cultivated a nice scrape-over of hair for my head - it keeps me warm in winter and gives my pet birds something to play with when I sleep."

"This movie cured me of my arachnophobia in the severest way possible. (I never knew you could choke so vigorously when you were scared!) I am now so confident that I am over my phobia that I am going to a fancy dress party dressed as Little Miss Muffet."

"After this movie all action movies are just a footnote in the history books."

"Who would have thought a silly ring could have been that important?"

"Samwise Gamgee the Brave? Who would have thought?"

"Oh what a lovely ending, it made all of the head chopping offs and violent splayings worthwhile, although I never did warm to those ruddy great big trees."

Lord Aragorn is crowned king. Frodo and Sam are saved and are reunited in a light-filled dreamy-like bedroom. Frodo and Bilbo Baggins sail off into the sunset after emotional parting.

A maaaaaa-gnificent achievement. A truly awesomely enormously fantastically big and yet, at the same time, a very detailed movie. Big in the sense that there's a cast of millions in CGI terms, and small in that the emotion really does sock you in the kisser at times, and especially in the final scenes.

That this movie is one of the most decorated of all movies in history is deserved, although it might also be due to the fact that the awards nerds were compensating for their hesitation in giving awards for the first two in the series, presumably because they feared that the last one might be all 'mucked up' and make the awards people look foolish...

As we know today, it wasn't mucked up at all.

This movie truly lives up to expectations and any person who is disappointed by this movie is probably hoping for too much in life.

My only quibble is that I never did quite buy into the fact that the Hobbits were as small as they were supposed to be. I know they made great efforts to make them look small compared to the horses etc, but the close ups just didn't work for me. But that aside, everything is as close to perfect as cinema can be.

Richly awarded, highly praised, rightly so. A magnificent achievement and the CGI is stunning.

January 20, 2005