The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Essential, and it won every one of the eleven Academy Awards it was nominated for, which no film had done before and only two had equalled. Part of that was the Academy rewarding the whole trilogy at the last opportunity. Most of it was earned here.

The Pelennor Fields is the largest battle sequence ever staged for a film and it is also the one with the clearest geography: you know where the wall is, where the gate is, where the river is, and what each arriving army changes. The charge of the Rohirrim works because a speech, a horn and a line of horses on a ridge are shot in that order and given time, not because the shot is enormous.

What carries it is the smaller half. Sam's last hour, carrying someone up a mountain on a story about going home, is the emotional argument the whole trilogy has been constructing, and the film is unembarrassed about it. Shelob is the best horror sequence Jackson ever shot, and it was moved here from the previous film, which is why that one ends where it does.

The endings are the standing complaint and it is half fair. There are four of them and the film needs three. The Extended Edition adds around fifty minutes including the Mouth of Sauron and a confrontation with Saruman that the theatrical cut leaves unresolved, which makes it longer and more complete; at four hours and change it is a commitment and it is the version most people end up preferring.