Yes.
First of all, the movie was a classic and worked on every level. My least favorite part of the book was always the Paths of the Dead, but it worked in the movie. I kept thinking it was handled differently onscreen–can anyone refresh my memory on the book version? (it’s been four years since I last read the books, BTW).
Vibrotronica, it’s been a while since I’ve read ROTK–but as I recall, Aragorn, Gimli & Legolas walk through the paths, picking up the Dead as they go, without any confrontation. Aragorn addresses the assembled Dead at the end (“oathbreakers, why have ye come” is the line, I believe) and they capture the boats from the corsairs.
I think the Dead are dismissed at that point – Aragorn sails the fleet up the river, the people of MT are dismayed thinking that more bad guys are joining the fight, but then Aragorn unfurls the banner of Gondor, hooray. I’m fuzzy as to who gets off the boats and fights, though.
The ramblings of my disordered mind:
Good Stuff
My favorite part had to be the charge of the Rohirrim: I didn’t find the movie as emotional as most people but I teared up at this point, it was so bloody cool.
Sam is the f’ing man.
The coming of the eagles was also very moving, though I thought there should have been more of them
Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith, as most have said, were positively stunning.
I too liked the bit were Sam is sent home, but then reutrns to save the day. I like how they didn’t show Sam taking the ring from Frodo (at least if they did, I missed it), so you sit there wondering (even if you’ve read the books) “what’s going to happen now?”
Paths/Host of the Dead: Awesome. It would have been great if they could have gotten Geoffrey Rush to be the King of the Dead. Oh well. 
The Battle of the Pelannor was unbelievably cool: I didn’t think it was really that long at all.
I like Pippin’s song (and felt bad for him! poor guy…), and Aragorn’s as well. As a side note I felt that there was a lot stuff for the book fans: Aragorn is said to be Elendil’s heir, whom they’ve shown but never really mentioned by name; what Aragorn is actually signing about, “The Eagles are coming,” etc.
Okay/bad stuff
In the Two Towers, Frodo shows the Ring to a Nazgul at Osgiliath. In RotK, after Pippen looks in the Palantir Merry tells us Sauron thinks Pippin is the Ring-bearer. Huh? Did the Nazgul forget to report the Ring, or something? I think I need to see it again; maybe this will be a little clearer to me.
I actually didn’t mind Legolas and the Oliphant, since it was pretty brief and Legolas didn’t really have much else to do (and Gimli’s reaction was great!!)
Eowyn: “I want to save you!”
Theoden: “You already did”
Anakin Skywalker: “You were right about me…tell you sister…you were right…”
(I still liked the scene anyway)
The “Pippin Shuffle” when he has the Palantir was a little silly.
Minas Tirith looked way too “fixed” during the coronation: they show what it looks like as they ride to the Black Gate, but it would have taken months or years to fix all of that up. They really give no good indication of time at that point.
I thought the Crown of Gondor should have been tons cooler: instead is was a little plain, much like something a King of Rohan would wear, and not one of the cool helms of Gondor (like what Faramir wore or the ones with the big wings like the Guards of the Citadel had).
Heh. If this were true, they could have just used the 1.5 second shot of him in the bar with the pumpkin at the end. Peter Jackson: “Hey, the real Andy Serkis was in this! Look, there he is! With the pumpkin! Oh wait, did you blink? Whoops, you missed him.”
Yeah, I think you’re right about the red arrow messenger. However, there were the great mountaintop beacons in the book – although those may have just been for alerting the rest of Gondor (rather than Rohan). But the beacons still rocked.
Yes – in the book, the dead only help Aragon and company take the corsair ships. By that time, Aragorn has also gathered other peoples from the southern parts of Gondor to fight with him, and after defeating the corsairs, those are the people that ride the ships to Minas Tirith and join the fight: people from southern Gondor, as well as a small band of Aragorn’s ranger friends from Arnor. (They were also the ones that brought him the message and the banner made by Arwen – not Elrond – and they walked the Paths of the Dead with him).
Merry doesn’t know that Frodo has shown the ring, and so is presumably simply wrong.
Re: Merry, Pippin, ring, Nazgul:
In the book it’s made very clear that Sauron thinks Pippin is the ringbearer and that he’s been captured by Saruman – how else would Pippin be looking into a palantir? So Merry’s comment is correct (just not supported by the evidence in the movie).
As to what happened with Frodo & the Nazgul in TT – the only way any of it makes sense is that the Nazgul weren’t sure that the ring was present (I know, I know…) because Frodo didn’t actually put it on. The Nazgul can’t see the ring–they can only sense its presence, and they (apparently) didn’t pick up on it. The Fell Beast may have seen the ring, but it didn’t share that fact with its rider. (If the above sounds shaky…blame PM, not me.)
And by PM, I meant PJ.
I could be wrong, of course, but I’m guessing that there will be a little more here between the orc-fight and Sam discovering the bodies in the Extended Edition. It felt like a jump, and I think there’s more to be inserted there, perhaps Sam getting through the magical “alarm” at the gate.
Another odd jump-spot… the sudden change of clothes for Sam and Frodo in Mordor. They’re wearing orc armor – now they’re not!. That’s probably another thing we’ll see in the Extended Edition, specifically Sam’s dismissal of the orc armor: “No more orc-gear for me!”
Though I know others feel differently, I didn’t miss the Scouring of the Shire one bit. Frankly, having just re-read the book last week, that whole chapter felt like an interruption, and almost derailed the story. It may have been Tolkien’s pet chapter, and so “essential” to him, but I never felt that it was an integral part of the story as a whole. I felt the same way about the Tom Bombadil segment of the first book, which is actually one of my favorite parts. I could clearly see why Jackson made the decision early on to cut both scenes (Scouring and Bombadil), and the film doesn’t lack for its loss in the least. The theme of change and the idea that “You can’t go home again” were captured just fine by Frodo’s departure.
There’s a few other little nitpicks I thought of this morning, but they’re all (including the two mentioned above) pretty meaningless in the end. What’s important is that Peter Jackson and company got the emotional center of the film, and the whole series, right on the money. The stakes were high, and the payoffs were huge. I’ll be seeing this one several more times in the theatre, to be sure, but I can already say that it affected me deeply, and left me speechless afterwards.
Even now, I still don’t have words to say how great a film this is. See it once, see it again… this is definitely the new standard of epic fantasy drama. Nothing else has come even close to it.
Of course, the Extended Edition will most likely be even better. 
Triton, remember that the Nazgul can’t see. As such, there’s no evidence that it saw the Ring when Frodo started to hold it up.
I loved the Dead. I thought it was brilliantly done, and actually improved on the book. I was always skeptical that Aragorn dismissed them after capturing the boats (jsc - the Corsairs’ slaves and soldiers from the south occupy the boats at that point), and that there would be a standing army in the south to conveniently put in the boats. Bringing the Dead to Minis Tirith works very well.
I don’t mind Frodo pushing Gollum. Gollum is very much a villain in the movies, and not nearly as redeemable as he is in the books. Its a big change, but understandable for the medium. Pushing him works on this new level.
The ending dragged. I’ve heard a lot of reviewers complain about it “having 6 or 7 endings”. Well, it wouldn’t have 6 or 7 endings if Peter Jackson wouldn’t have put in huge 1 second completely black screen frames between these moments. Completely unneccessary. If the plots don’t flow very well together, at least make the visuals flow together.
My audience was very well behaved. There was one younger member who wimpered, “Oh no, I don’t like spiders!” when Shelob appeared, but that was really cute. The whole audience laughed at that.
I think I was most misty-eyed during the horns of Rohan. That fool of a Took has always been my favorite hobbit behind Frodo, and the mention of his hearing the horns before the charge is a memorable one for me.
Sam annoys me. In the movie, he could do no wrong, which I don’t like. In the books, his actions towards Gollum are near-unforgiveable. In the movies, he’s the only voice of reason against the utter blackness of Gollum’s intentions. Oh well - with Gollum as a villain it works.
Best movie of the decade, but it won’t win Best Picture.
Forgot to mention how well done the sheer terror the Nazgul inflicted on the people of Minis Tirith. Especially the scene of the one person with his hands over his ears and screaming. Excellent.
Yup, I was saying to myself “Trebuchets! Yay!” (I think trebuchets are Very Neat.
Yup, I thought the same thing. A couple of times I thought, “Ok, where exactly IS the guard tower for the guys who man these beacons? And I hope those beacons that are above the clouds are still burning by the time the clouds breaks, so that anyone lower will be able to SEE them.” Those thoughts kinda took me out of the appreciation of the beacons.
And I forgot to mention how much I loved the charge of the Dead on the field at Pelennor. When they appeared behind Aragorn and surged forward with him… brrrr. Chilling and inspiring at the same time. I don’t know how Jackson does it, but I love it.
Um…did you happen to be reading the same Lord of the rings as the rest of us? In the film…exactly as in the novel Eowyn kills the witch king after he is ‘wounded’ by Merry. Are you sure you’re reading the same material? Believe it or not the ‘Appendices’ are included with the novel because Tolkien felt they were important and anyone who bothers reading them comes to realize just how important and meaningful Arwen is to Aragorn. And the matter of the sacrifice of her Immortality. A matter which I think Jackson handles very well. One of the few ‘changes’ in the story I thought was handled with great skill.
I loved it too! Seeing the White Rider going out to save Faramir was awesome but why was Pippin riding with him? I assume it was so Faramir could recognize him as a hobbit but he could have done that when he got back in the city. Ahh, whatever. Nitpicks aside I thought it was a great movie. It was a pleasant surprise when people in Gondor called Gandalf Mithrandir. That’s one of the things I missed from the book.
Well, ‘I’ read the same source material as you, but I felt that the whole Arwen/Aragorn ‘thing’ should have been left on the cutting room floor. I loved the ‘movies’ despite Live Tyler’s ‘acting’.
Avalonian, you and I are of one accord. I would’ve made the same choices without a second thought.
Even when he does make a cut, PJ has a knack for capturing the sentiment even if its in a single line or a single shot. Example: in a late chapter or possibly appendix, there’s a wrap-up of how the members of the FOTR spent their days; it describes how Merry & Pippin were dashing figures in the Shire, with their exotic foreign livery and their ability to ride a horse. The movie caught that perfectly, in the simple shot of the 4 hobbits riding by Fatty Bolger’s house (in an extremely cool reprise of the opening scenes of FOTR), with Pippin smiling down at him in his Guardian of the Citadel uniform.
CaptEgo,
I’ve read the appedices (read them again last night because of comments similar to yours, which made me think maybe I hadn’t read them - or at the very least misremembered them) and I STILL don’t get why Arwen was so important to Aragorn. It just isn’t a convincing romance to me. As far as I can tell, he loves her because she is beautiful (thought he had more depth than that). And she loves him for completely unexplained reasons (but at least we’ve been given enough insight into his character to guess). Oh wait, there is a sentance that mentions that in the twenty odd years they’ve been seperated, he has developed qualities worthy of her admiration.
I’m beginning to suspect this is a gender line thing. Women read the books, think Eowyn rocks, she loves Aragorn, he’s hung up on a some elf chick we barely see a glimpse of, and the appendix is unsatisfying as to why. All the conversations I’ve ever had with women on these books contain the same “huh?” The movies are a little better in that they have Arwen “watching him from afar,” and we do get to see that they are in love, but she still seems like such a simpering wimp (outside of her Glorfindel stand in) its hard to believe anyone would put up with her for five minutes, much less want to marry her. (She does have a nice rack however, much nicer than I ever imagined an elf having - maybe thats it).
I appreciated how Jackson was able to work in some descriptions from the book as dialogue. Specifically, the scene between Pippen and Gandalf discussing what death is like. Gandalf says one will finally see “a far green country under a swift sunrise.” That description shows up twice in the trilogy: first in Frodo’s dream in Tom Bombadil’s house, and again to describe Frodo’s first glimpse of Valinor from the Last Ship. It was always one of my favorite images from the books and I loved hearing it in the movie.
Dangerosa,
I suspect it’s also a matter of a time and place (in terms of when Tolkien was writing and what type of fellow he was) but as much as all of us Modernists hate it, to him love was ‘inexplicable’. Much as Beren was entranced by Luthien, Aragorn is simply in ‘love’ with Arwen. Tolkien was expressing his romantic side in this love story not because the story needed romance but because it was an extension of his own feelings (and the fact that he was Beren and Aragorn in his relationship with his wife). You could also argue that the fact that Aragorn is far away from Arwen enhances the purity of his love for her as it has a chance to remain in the ideal state of the mind (although once again our modern readers appear to want to see more signs of Aragorn the horndog).
It’s kinda funny that people seem to want to impose thir own values on the characters in stories. Regardless of how strong or worthy or whatever Eowyn might be, the fact of the matter is that Aragorn already is in love with someone else (not to mention that he is in love with someone willing to sacrifice their immortality for him) and it is a bit perverse for people to suggest that he should blow that someone off because there is ‘another’ strong female character kicking around. Add to this the fact that Arwen makes sense as a partner for him. His long life will not likely be marred by the almost imminent death of a ‘normal’ woman.
As to the women who simply go ‘huh?’ they are by no means a totality. I happen to have female friends who deeply appreciate the poignacy of Aragorn and Eowyn as Star crossed. Maybe they are right for each other but it is destined not to be and this too makes it meaningful.