Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen
Director: Peter Jackson
Country: New Zealand, USA
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

All good things must come to an end. All great things get a four and a half hour extended edition.

Farewells are always difficult, which might be why there are twenty-five minutes of them at the close of this trilogy. Peter Jackson sealed the deal on his legacy with the release of the final chapter of the beloved Lord of the Rings films, and with much legitimacy. To see the characters at the end of Return of the King compared to the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, it’s hard to believe that they came from such humble beginnings. It’s impossible not to be bombarded with the word “epic” while watching RotK as everything is bigger and grander than anything I’ve ever seen on screen before. Good luck to all of the sci-fi fantasy films of the next twenty years living in its shadow.