I got to go with the “it’s really one movie” idea because I enjoyed Two Towers much more than the other two, but it wouldn’t make any sense without the first or feel completed without the third.
I was so underwhelmed by Fellowship, I almost didn’t go see Towers. I finally caved in and saw it in the last weeks of release and was so glad I did.
back into my own thread to say two things -
one thanks for the responses and two, on rewatching LOTR another outstanding thing to me was Gollum. He still seems like another character, another portrayal - not a geewhiz special effect. That is one of the biggest accomplishments of the films, I think.
I can’t speak for anyone who says they hate one of these films, but I did say I preferred the first.
If The Lord of the Rings trilogy was one movie, somebody owes me a refund for the extra tickets and DVDs I bought. They should also give back a bunch of Academy Awards that were given on the premise of a second and third film actually existing. On the upside, they can shorten the running length considerably by removing two sets of opening titles and end credits.
But the fact that it was three movies not one is not really open to debate unless we use uncommon definitions of the words “three,” “one” or “movies.” They were conceived, written, marketed, and exhibited as three. That they tell parts of the same story and were filmed together is not relevant or unique. (see, e.g., Jean de Floret and Manon of the Springs; or Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions).
But even if they were – so what? Since when is it unreasonable to say you enjoyed the beginning of a movie more than the end, or the first act of a play more than the third, or the opening chapter more than the last?
One reason (but certainly not the only one) I give the nod to the first is that I can enjoy it as a complete film on its own merits. I know some people were upset by the supposed lack of an ending (although how they managed to remain ignorant that it was the first part of a longer story – that’s story, not movie – is beyond me). But in my view the first film is complete. We see the forging and breaking of the Fellowship, and we see a privileged member of the landed gentry with no sense of purpose become part of a mission for the greater good and ultimately accept his destiny as the (so he thinks) lone hero.
Note that the movie includes the death of Boromir and subsequent ceremony, thus “closing the book” so to speak on his story and that of the Fellowship. In the novel, these events were part of the volume called “The Two Towers.” That’s just one example of how what was one novel published in three parts became three separate but interrelated movies
ROTK takes a distant third to the other two movies. And I think it’s because the focus moves from Frodo to Aragorn. It’s like Jackson and crew decided to show to us how cool Aragorn is and why he should be king. And then the movie ends when he’s crowned. OK there’s more but it just the longer version of “…and they lived happily ever after till end of their days”. Every time I see that movie I think that’s it? That’s where it ends? Frodo is the hobbit with PTSD that goes to the Gray Havens?
That’s because that’s what happens to Frodo; He pretty much goes off to the Havens because he is damaged by his journey.
Now, to be fair, Frodo gets a lot more “Screen time” in the book, as he stumbles across Mordor dying of thirst, but even there, the internal camera largely shifts to Sam, because at that point, Frodo is pretty much nuts, and it’s all he can do to basically think “Must…keep…walking!” On the flipside, Aragorn, by contrast, has much less face time in the book. MUCH less. The entire Paths of the Dead sequence from leaving Eowyn at Dunharrow to arriving at Minas Tirith is told in “flashback” by Legolas and Gimli.
I think why Fellowship and to a lesser extent, Towers, worked was that they actually did play as “ensemble” pieces, where it wasn’t just about Frodo & Aragorn. For some reason, as Tolkien added more characters, Jackson seemed to tighten his focus as if to try to avoid confusing the audience. (It didn’t work. 
I disagree. Scenes of all three films were shot as part of one continuous film shoot. Some scenes in the third film were shot before other scenes in the first film, and editing, musical and other creative decisions were made on all three films long before the first film was released.
I’d say they were conceived as one long three-part film and marketed and exhibited as three.
I’m in the same boat. To me, it’s just one big film and while there are flaws in all the “segments”, I thought it was a stunning cinematic achievement.
It’s worth noting, for all the people who are arguing that they were “Shot in one continuous filming” that that’s not really true. Yes, the “primary” photography was done as one big lump, but huge swaths of the later films were in fact, filmed after the release of Fellowship as “pickups”. The editing, in many cases, came right down to the wire.
Oh, I should add that a few friends and did the whole re-viewing about 2 years ago. We had the DVDs for all 3 films and did the marathon session on my Big Screen HDTV (still a bit of a novelty back then). They were great. I liked them just as much the second time around.
Part of the reason I prefer to think of them as three movies rather than one is that the unitary view forces me to regard them as a horrendous failure rather than a flawed series. ROTK is enormously bad in my view–painful to watch, really.
I don’t know if I count, because I watched the trilogy for the first time last summer and then immediately rewatched it via the extended editions. But I loved it more the second time, and my favorite film switched from Fellowship to a tie between TTT and ROTK … with ROTK slightly in the lead, because I loved Pippin and Eowyn’s journeys so damn much. So I’m a total anomoly.
The reason I prefer the latter two films to the first? Because they mean so much more to me, emotionally, now that I know the characters. The fates of everyone has a true impact, right in the gut, and as much as Fellowship is an astoundingly lovely film, it’s not as moving a tale as the others.
And now I wanna watch 'em again. I’ll force myself to wait for the holidays so they’ll feel more “special eventy.”
I love all three, but I think that the best film is the extended Two Towers, actually.
After that, it’s the extended Fellowship of the Ring followed by the extended Return of the King.
However, I think all of them are brilliant.
But the editors are different. Fellowship is better edited than Return of the Kings. There are also revisions to the scripts and additional shots made after the principal shooting was done.
I can honestly say I like the Fellowship part better than the Return of the Kings segments anyway. I just don’t like some of the ideas in the Two Tower and Return of the Kings. Also, PJ has a hard time doing ‘good’ that evil looks cooler - see Arwen, Galadriel, Denethlor (oh what had they done to you??)
I’ve always rated the films as follows:
Fellowship: Best film overall/Best extended edition
TTT: Most IMPROVED by the extended edition
RotK: Hands down the worst extended edition. Best watched in theatrical. Ugh, paths of the dead. Why why!?!
Not only will I echo your hatred of the ROTK extended edition, I would like to add that the overly-literal interpretation of the Mouth of Sauron–and Aragorn’s hugely out-of-character murder of same–is even worse than Jackson’s rape of the Dead.
Yeah, I always thought that Aragorn lopping off the head of the Mouth of Sauron during a parley - loathsome and malicious as the Mouth was - didn’t ring true at all. Not at all in keeping with his royal, Lawful Good character.
Big Tolkien fan, have read the LotR 3-4 times and his minor works once, plus a book analyzing his works and a book of JRRT’s letters to various people. (Could not get through The Silmarillion though).
But Jackson made really good choices in what themes to expand on and what sections to shorten or drop. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movies so I can’t answer the OP directly. But IMO the movies did a fantastic job of adapting a great trilogy to the screen.
This was a little jarring - but I’m not sure why you would limit this criticism to the second and third films.
(I’m not sure where, but I picked up an idea somewhere that the real villains would be likely to seem fairer but feel fouler.)
Yup. Needless to say, it’s better handled in the book, where Aragorn barely even gives the Mouth a menacing look before the craven coward yelps “Don’t hurt me, I’m a messenger!”, and basically gets told “If you want ambassadorial privileges, act like an ambassador. Now get on with your job”.
My feeling is that the editing & post-production (and yes extra scenes filmed after the main production wrapped) on the last two films were hugely rushed. If you watch TTT and ROTK with an eye to such things, it becomes pretty obvious that the filmmaker was having to make all sorts of changes on the fly while under a tight deadline. But FOTR, even tho it certainly had deadlines of its own (it was the first film after all), was it seems given more time in pre-production for PJ to more carefully plan and storyboard things and so on. To “breathe” in other words.
Now, I dislike certain things that he did, yes (verging on loathing in a few cases, more of wistful, “oh well” in others), but he had to make literally hundreds upon hundreds of decisions as to whether to (a) keep things verbatim from the book, (b) change things from the book, minorly or majorly, (c) drop things which wouldn’t have worked on screen at all (or detracted from the pacing or made him exceed his time limits, etc.), or (d) add something of his own creation. People often focus on the sins he committed in categories (b) & (d) (some of which I agree with), but (c) likely involved the majority of decisions, many of them heartbreaking no doubt, but I agree with the vast majority of them (yes even Bombadil & The Scouring). I don’t know how well things would have worked cinematically if, in a perfect world, he had twice the time he did-given 5 film’s worth we might very well have gotten a bloated snoozefest. As it was things sometimes went too far to the other extreme and often seemed rushed.