[Azaelia of Willowbottom]

I do agree with your feelings about the first movie. It was amazing, and remains one of the best I have ever seen. It really was an incredible experience, watching it.
I, however, do not agree at all with your feelings about the other two. I was wowed, then wowed again. If anything, I got the feeling that the movies were getting better and better. After Fellowship, I lovedlovedloved the Two Towers.
Return of the King is my favorite movie. Ever. It took my breath away. I found it so powerful, so moving, so filled with sad beauty....

The three movies have very different "feels" to them. Fellowship is green and happy, with less heavy material than the other two. There is more genuine humor, light, and joy in it than the others. The same is very true of the books. The tone that Tolkien used when writing Fellowship is very, very different from the tone of the other two installments.

The Two Towers will always be sort of strange. It's the middle movie in a trilogy, which makes it difficult, no real beginning, no real end. That alone takes away somewhat from the "flowiness" of the movie. I do agree that there were some awkward moments (some of the Gimli comic relief comes to mind), but I'm willing to overlook that.

The Return of the King is in my opinion the best of the three. If there were any awkward moments, I entirely ignored them. It is certainly the darkest, most intense movie of the three, but that is as it should be. It is also the most powerful, at least for me.

I guess I never really got a sense of a decline in quality. I was completely amazed by each movie, and I definitely had the general feeling of them getting better and better.
Each to her own, I guess.

Phantom, as for Fellowship being more "middle earthian", how so do you mean? It certainly is more happy and hobbity, but middle earthian, no. The circumstances in Middle-Earth changed as the story went on, and so did the movies. If the last two are more intense, darker, and perhaps grittier and more realistic, it is because the story changed that way as well. The next time you read Lord of the Rings, try comparing the tone of Fellowship, especially at the beginning, to the tone of the other two books. There is a very obvious difference, and I think that the movies conveyed that quite well.